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THE 
tSTORY OF THE MIND 



BY 

JAMES MARK BALDWIN 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 



NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

i8q8 



3^ 



(c\ 



'^■ 



11187 



Copyright, 1898, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



^3' '"^^^ 




TWO OOFIcG RECEIVED. 



2nd copy, 

1898. 



Vi 1^ 






PREFACE. 



In this little book I have endeavoured to 
maintain the simplicity which is the ideal of 
this series. It is more difficult, however, to be 
simple in a topic which, even in its illustrations, 
demands of the reader more or less facility in the 
exploration of his own mind. I am persuaded 
that the attempt to make the matter of psychology 
more elementary than is here done, would only 
result in making it untrue and so in defeating its 
own object. 

In preparing the book I have secured the right 
and welcomed the opportunity to include certain 
more popular passages from earlier books and ar- 
ticles. It is necessary to say this, for some peo- 
ple are loath to see a man repeat himself. When 
one has once said a thing, however, about as well 
as he can say it, there is no good reason that he 
should be forced into the pretence of_ saying 
something different simply to avoid using the 
same form of words a second time. The question, 
of course, is as to whether he should not then re- 
sign himself to keeping still, and letting others do 
the further speaking. There is much to be said 
for such a course. But if one have the right to 
print more severe and difficult things, and think 
he really has something to say which would in- 
struct the larger audience, it would seem only fair 



Vi THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

to allow him to speak in the simpler way also, even 
though all that he says may not have the merit of 
escapmg the charge of infringing his own copy- 
rights! 

I am indebted to the proprietors of the follow- 
ing magazines for the use of such passages : The 
Popular Science Monthly, The Century Maga- 
zine, The Inland Educator; and with them I also 
wish to thank The Macmillan Company and the 
owners of Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia. 

As to the scope and contents of the Story, I 
have aimed to include enough statement of meth- 
ods and results in each of the great departments 
of psychological research to give the reader an 
intelligent idea of what is being done, and to whet 
his appetite for more detailed information. In 
the choice of materials I have relied frankly on 
my own experience and in debatable matters given 
my own opinions. This gives greater reality to 
the several topics, besides making it possible, by 
this general statement, at once to acknowledge it, 
and also to avoid discussion and citation of au- 
thorities in the text. At the same time, in the 
exposition of general principles I have endeav- 
oured to keep well within the accepted truth and 
terminology of psychology. 

It will be remarked that in several passages 
the evolution theory is adopted in its application 
to the mind. While this great theory can not be 
discussed in these pages, yet I may say that, in 
my opinion, the evidence in favour of it is about 
the same, and about as strong, as in biology, 
where it is now made a presupposition of scien- 
tific explanation. So far from iDeing unwelcome, 
I find it in psychology no less than in biology a 
great gain, both from the pomt of view of scien- 



PREFACE. Vll 

tific knowledge and from that of philosophical 
theory. Every great law that is added to our 
store adds also to our conviction that the universe 
is run through with Mind. Even so-called Chance, 
which used to be the " bogie " behind Natural Se- 
lection, has now been found to illustrate — in the 
law of Probabilities — the absence of Chance. As 
Professor Pearson has said : " We recognise that 
our conception of Chance is now utterly different 
from that of yore. . , . What we are to under- 
stand by a chance distribution is one in accord- 
ance with law, and one the nature of which can, 
for all practical purposes, be closely predicted," 
If the universe be pregnant with purpose, as we 
all wish to believe, why should not this purpose 
work itself out by an evolution process under 
law ? — and if under law, why not the law of Proba- 
bilities ? We who have our lives insured provide 
for our children through our knowledge and use 
of this law ; and our plans for their welfare, in 
most of the affairs of life, are based upon the 
recognition of it. Who will deny to the Great 
Purpose a similar resource in producing the uni- 
verse and in providing for us all ? 

I add in a concluding section on Literature 
some references to various books in English, 
classified under the headings of the chapters of 
the text. These works will further enlighten the 
reader, and, if he persevere, possibly make a psy- 
chologist of him. 

J. Mark Baldwin. 

Princeton, April, i8g8. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Science of the Mind — Psychology . i 
II. What our Minds have in Common — Intro- 
spective Psychology 8 

III. The Mind of the Animal — Comparative 

Psychology 24 

IV. The Mind of the Child — Child Psychol- 

ogy 51 

V. The Connection of Body with Mind — 
Physiological Psychology — Mental Dis- 
eases ... ICI 

VI. How WE experiment on the Mind — Ex- 
perimental Psychology .... 122 
VII. Suggestion and Hypnotism .... 148 
VIII. The Training of the Mind — Educational 

Psychology 166 

IX. The Individual Mind and Society — Social 

Psychology 200 

X. The Genius and his Environment . .211 

XI. Literature . 233 

ix 



THE STORY OF THE MIND. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE SCIENCE OF THE MIND — PSYCHOLOGY. 

Psychology is the science of the mind. It 
aims to find out all about the mind — the whole 
story — just as the other sciences aim to find out 
all about the subjects of which they treat — as- 
tronomy, of the stars ; geology, of the earth ; 
physiology, of the body. And when we wish to 
trace out the story of the mind, as psychology 
has done it, we find that there are certain general 
truths with which we should first acquaint our- 
selves; truths which the science has been a very 
long time finding out, but which we can now re- 
alize without a great deal of explanation. These 
general truths, we may say, are preliminary to 
the story itself; they deal rather with the need 
of defining, first of all, the subject or. topic of 
which the story is to be told. 

I. The first such truth is that the mind is not 
the possession of man alone. Other creatures have 
minds. Psychology no longer confines itself, as it 
formerly did, to the human soul, denying to the 
animals a place in this highest of all the sciences. 
It finds itself unable to require any test or evi- 
dence of the presence of mind which the animals 
do not meet, nor does it find any place at which 
the story of the mind can begin higher up than 

I 



2 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

the very beginnings of life. For as soon as we 
ask, " How much mind is necessary to start with ? " 
we have to answer, "Any mind at all"; and all 
the animals are possessed of some of the actions 
which we associate with mind. Of course, the 
ascertainment of the truth of this belongs — as the 
ascertainment of all the truths of nature belongs 
—to scientific investigation itself. It is the scien- 
tific man's rule not to assume anything except as 
he finds facts to support the assumption. So we 
find a great department of psychology devoted to 
just this question — i. e., of tracing mind in the 
animals and in the child, and noting the stages of 
what is called its "evolution" in the ascending 
scale of animal life, and its " development " in the 
rapid growth which every child goes through in 
the nursery. This gives us two chapters of the 
story of the mind. Together they are called 
" Genetic Psychology," having two divisions, " Ani- 
mal or Comparative Psychology" and "Child 
Psychology." 

2. Another general truth to note at the outset 
is this : that we are able to get real knowledge 
about the mind. This may seem at first sight a 
useless question to raise, seeing that our minds 
are, in the thought of many, about the only things 
we are really sure of. But that sort of sureness 
is not what science seeks. Every science requires 
some means of investigation, some method of 
procedure, which is more exact than the mere 
say-so of common sense ; and which can be used 
over and again by different investigators and 
under different conditions. This gives a high de- 
gree of verification and control to the results once 
obtained. The chemist has his acids, and re- 
agents, and blowpipes, etc. ; they constitute his in- 



THE SCIENCE OF THE MIND-PSYCHOLOGY. 3 

struments, and by using them, under certain con- 
stant rules, he keeps to a consistent method. So 
with the physiologist ; he has his microscope, his 
staining fluids, his means of stimulating the tis- 
sues of the body, etc. The physicist also makes 
much of his lenses, and membranes, and electrical 
batteries, and X-ray apparatus. In like manner 
it is necessary that the psychologist should have 
a recognised way of investigating the mind, which 
he can lay before anybody saying : "■ There, you 
see my results, you can get them for yourself by 
the same method that I used." 

In fulfilling this requirement the psychologist 
resorts to two methods of procedure. He is 
able to investigate the mind in two ways, which 
are of such general application that anybody of 
sufficient training to make scientific observations 
at all can repeat them and so confirm the results. 
One of these is what is called Introspection. It 
consists in taking note of one's own mind, as all 
sorts of changes are produced in it, such as emo- 
tions, memories, associations of events now gone, 
etc., and describing everything that takes place. 
Other persons can repeat the observations with 
their own minds, and see that what the first re- 
ports is true. This results in a body of knowl- 
edge which is put together and called " Introspec- 
tive Psychology," and one chapter of the story 
should be devoted to that. 

Then the other way we have is that of experi- 
menting on some one else's mind. We can act on 
our friends and neighbours in various ways, mak- 
ing them feel, think, accept, refuse this and that, 
and then observe how they act. The differences 
in their action will show the differences in the feel- 
ings, etc., which we have produced. In pursuing 



4 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

this method the psychologist takes a person — 
called the "subject" or the "re-agent" — into his 
laboratory, asks him to be willing to follow cer- 
tain directions carefully, such as holding an elec- 
tric handle, blowing into a tube, pushing a but- 
ton, etc., when he feels, sees, or hears certain 
things; this done with sufficient care, the results 
are found recorded in certain ways w^hich the 
psychologist has arranged beforehand. This sec- 
ond way of proceeding gives results which are 
gathered under the two headings " Experimental " 
and "Physiological Psychology." They should 
also have chapters in our story. 

3. There is besides another truth which the 
psychologist nowadays finds very fruitful for his 
knowledge of the mind ; this is the fact that minds 
vary much in different individuals, or classes of 
individuals. First, there is the pronounced differ- 
ence between healthy minds and diseased minds. 
The differences are so great that we have to pur- 
sue practically different methods of treating the 
diseased, not only as a class apart from the 
well minds — putting such diseased persons into 
institutions — but also as differing from one an- 
other. Just as the different forms of bodily dis- 
ease teach us a great deal about the body — its 
degree of strength, its forms of organization and 
function, its limitations, its heredity, the inter- 
connection of its parts, etc. — so mental diseases 
teach us much about the normal mind. This gives 
another sphere of information which constitutes 
" Abnormal Psychology " or " Mental Pathology." 

There are also very striking variations between 
individuals even within normal life; well people 
are very different from one another. All that is 
commonly meant by character or temperament as 



THE SCIENCE OF THE MIND-PSYCHOLOGY. 5 

distinguishing one person from another is evi- 
dence of these difterences. But really to know 
all about mind we should see what its variations 
are, and endeavour to find out why the variations 
exist. This gives, then, another topic, " Indi- 
vidual or Variational Psychology." This sub- 
ject should also have notice in the story. 

4. Allied with this the demand is made upon 
the psychologist that he show to the teacher how 
to train the mind ; how to secure its development 
in the individual most healthfully and produc- 
tively, and with it all in a way to allow the varia- 
tions of endowment which individuals show each 
to bear its ripest fruit. This is " Educational or 
Pedagogical Psychology." 

5. Besides all these great undertakings of 
the psychologist, there is another department of 
fact which he must some time find very fruitful, 
although as yet he has not been able to investi- 
gate it thoroughly : he should ask about the place 
of the mind in the world at large. If we seek to 
know what the mind has done in the world, what 
a wealth of story comes to us from the very be- 
ginnings of history ! Mind has done all that has 
been done: it has built human institutions, indited 
literature, made science, discovered the laws of 
Nature, used the forces of the material world, em- 
bodied itself in all the monuments which stand to 
testify to the presence of man. What could tell 
us more of what mind is than this record of what 
mind has done? The ethnologists are patiently 
tracing the records left by early man in his uten- 
sils, weapons, clothing, religious rites, architec- 
tural remains, etc., and the anthropologists are 
seeking to distinguish the general and essential 
from the accidental and temporary in all the his- 



6 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

tory of culture and civilization. They are mak- 
ing progress very slowly, and it is only here and 
there that principles are being discovered which 
reveal to the psychologist the necessary modes 
of action and development of the mind. All this 
comes under the head of '* Race Psychology." 

6. Finally, another department, the newest of 
all, investigates the action of minds when they 
are thrown together in crowds. The animals 
herd, the insects swarm, most creatures live in 
companies; they are gregarious, and man no less 
is social in his nature. So there is a psychology 
of herds, crowds, mobs, etc., all put under the 
heading of *' Social Psychology." It asks the 
question. What new phases of the mind do we 
find when individuals unite in common action ? — 
or, on the other hand, when they are artificially 
separated ? 

We now have with all this a fairly complete 
idea of what The Story of the Mind should in- 
clude, when it is all told. Many men are spend- 
ing their lives each at one or two of these great 
questions. But it is only as the results are all 
brought together in a consistent view of that won- 
derful thing, the mind, that we may hope to find 
out all that it is. We must think of it as a grow- 
ing, developing thing, showing its stages of evo- 
lution in the ascending animal scale, and also in 
the unfolding of the child ; as revealing its nature 
in every change of our daily lives which we ex- 
perience and tell to one another or find ourselves 
unable to tell; as allowing itself to be discovered 
in the laboratory, and as willing to leave the 
marks of its activity on the scientist's blackened 
drum and the dial of the chronoscope ; as subject 
to the limitations of health and disease, needing 



THE SCIENCE OF THE MIND— PSYCHOLOGY. 7 

to be handled with all the resources of the asy- 
lum, the reformatory, the jail, as well as with the 
delicacy needed to rear the sensitive girl or to 
win the love of the bashful maid; as manifesting 
itself in the development of humanity from the 
first rude contrivances for the use of fire, the first 
organizations for defence, and the first inscrip- 
tions of picture writing, up to the modern inven- 
tions in electricity, the complex constitutions of 
government, and the classic productions of liter- 
ary art ; and as revealing its possibilities finally in 
the brutal acts of the mob, the crimes of a lynch- 
ing party, and the deeds of collective righteous- 
ness performed by our humane and religious so- 
cieties. 

It would be impossible, of course, within the 
limits of this little volume, to give even the main 
results in so many great chapters of this ambitious 
and growing science. I shall not attempt that; 
but the rather select from the various departments 
certain outstanding results and principles. From 
these as elevations the reader may see the moun- 
tains on the horizon, so to speak, which at his 
leisure, and with better guides, he may explore. 
The choice of materials from so rich a store has 
depended also, as the preface states, on the writ- 
er's individual judgment, and it is quite probable 
that no one will find the matters altogether wisely 
chosen. All the great departments now thus 
briefly described, however, are represented in the 
following chapters. 



THE STORY OF THE MIND. 



CHAPTER II. 

WHAT OUR MINDS HAVE IN COMMON INTRO- 
SPECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 

Of all the sources now indicated from which 
the psychologist may draw, that of so-called In- 
trospective Psychology — the actual reports of 
what we find going on in our minds from time to 
time — is the most important. This is true for two 
great reasons, which make Psychology different 
from all the other sciences. The first claim which 
the introspective method has upon us arises from 
the fact that it is only by it that we can examine 
the mind directly, and get its events in their 
purity. Each of us knows himself better than he 
knows any one else. So this department, in which 
we deal each with his own consciousness at first 
hand, is more reliable, if free from error, than any 
of those spheres in which we examine other per- 
sons, so long as we are dealing with the psychol- 
ogy of the individual. The second reason that 
this method of procedure is most important is 
found in the fact that all the other departments 
of psychology — and with them all the other sci- 
ences — have to use introspection, after all, to 
make sure of the results which they get by other 
methods. For example, the natural scientist, the 
botanist, let us say, and the physical scientist, 
the electrician, say, can not observe the plants or 
the electric sparks without really using his intro- 
spection upon what is before him. The light from 
the plant has to go into his brain and leave a cer- 
tain effect in his mind, and then he has to use in- 
trospection to report what he sees. The astrono- 



WHAT OUR MINDS HAVE IN COMMON. 9 

mer who has bad eyes can not observe the stars 
well or discover the facts about them, because 
his introspection in reporting what he sees pro- 
ceeds on the imperfect and distorted images com- 
ing in from his defective eyesight. So a man 
given to exaggeration, who is not able to report 
truthfully what he remembers, can not be a good 
botanist, since this defect in introspection will 
render his observation of the plants unreliable. 

In practice the introspective method has been 
most important, and the development of psychol- 
ogy has been up to very recently mainly due to 
its use. As a consequence, there are many gen- 
eral principles of mental action and many laws of 
mental growth already discovered which should 
in the first instance engage our attention. They 
constitute the main framework of the building; 
and we should master them well before we go on 
to find the various applications which they have 
in the other departments of the subject. 

The greater results of "Introspective" or, as 
it is very often called, " General " psychology 
may be summed up in a few leading principles, 
which sound more or less abstract and difficult, 
but which will have many concrete illustrations in 
the subsequent chapters. The facts of experience, 
the actual events which we find taking place in 
our minds, fall naturally into certain great divi- 
sions. These are very easily distinguished from 
one another. The first distinction is covered 
by the popularly recognised difference between 
"thought and conduct," or "knowledge and life." 
On the one hand, the mind is looked at as receiv- 
ing, taking in, learning ; and on the other hand, as 
acting, willing, doing this or that. Another great 
distinction contrasts a third mental condition, 



lO THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

" feeling," with both of the other two. We say a 
man has knowledge, but little feeling, head but 
no heart; or that he knows and feels the right 
but does not live up to it. 

I. On the side of Reception we may first point 
out the avenues through which our experiences 
come to us: these are the senses — a great num- 
ber, not simply the five special senses of which 
we were taught in our childhood. Besides Sight, 
Hearing, Taste, Smell, and Touch, we now know of 
certain others very definitely. There are Muscle 
sensations coming from the moving of our limbs, 
Organic sensations from the inner vital organs, 
Heat and Cold sensations which are no doubt dis- 
tinct from each other. Pain sensations probably 
having their own physical apparatus, sensations 
from the Joints, sensations of Pressure, of Equili- 
brium of the body, and a host of peculiar sensa- 
tional conditions which, for all we know, may be 
separate and distinct, or may arise from combi- 
nations of some of the others. Such, for exam- 
ple, are the sensations which are felt when a cur- 
rent of electricity is sent through the arm. 

All these give the mind its material to work 
upon ; and it gets no material in the first in- 
stance from any other source. All the things we 
know, all our opinions, knowledges, beliefs, are 
absolutely dependent at the start upon this sup- 
ply of material from our senses; although, as we 
will see, the mind gets a long way from its first 
subjection to this avalanche of sensations which 
come constantly pouring in upon it from the ex- 
ternal world. Yet this is the essential and capital 
function of Sensation : to supply the material on 
which the mind does the work in its subsequent 
thought and action. 



WHAT OUR MINDS HAVE IN COMMON. ii 

Next comes the process by which the mind 
holds its material for future use, the process of 
Memory ; and with it the process by which it com- 
bines its material together in various useful forms, 
making up things and persons out of the material 
which has been received and remembered — called 
Association of Ideas, Thinking, Reasoning, etc. All 
these processes used to be considered as separate 
"faculties" of the soul and as showing the mind 
doing different things. But that view is now com- 
pletely given up. Psychology now treats the ac- 
tivity of the mind in a much more simple way. It 
says: Mind does only one thing; in all these so- 
called faculties we have the mind doing this one 
thing only on the different materials which come 
and go in it. This one thing is the combining, or 
holding together, of the elements which first come 
to it as sensations, so that it can act on a group 
of them as if they were only one and represented 
only one external thing. Let me illustrate this 
single and peculiar sort of process as it goes on in 
the mind. 

We may ask how the child apprehends an 
orange out there on the table before him. It 
can not be said that the orange goes into the 
child's mind by any one of its senses. By sight 
he gets only the colour and shape of the orange, 
by smell he gets only its odour, by tast« its sweet- 
ness, and by touch its smoothness, rotundity, etc. 
Furthermore, by none of these senses does he 
find out the individuality of the orange, or dis- 
tinguish it from other things which involve the 
same or similar sensations — say an apple. It is 
easy to see that after each of the senses has sent 
in its report something more is necessary: the 
combining of them all together in the same place 



12 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

and at the same time, the bringing up of an ap- 
propriate name, and with that. a sort of relating 
or distinguishing of this group of sensations from 
those of the apple. Only then can we say that 
the knowledge, '' here is an orange," has been 
reached. • Now this is the 07ie typical way the mind 
has of acting, this combining of all the items or 
groups of items into ever larger and more fruit- 
ful combinations. This is called Apperception. 
The mind, we say, " apperceives " the orange 
when it is able to treat all the separate sensations 
together as standing for one thing. And the va- 
rious circumstances under which the mind does 
this give the occasions for the different names 
which the earlier psychology used for marking 
off different "faculties." 

These names are still convenient, however, 
and it may serve to make the subject clear, as 
well as to inform the reader of the meaning of 
these terms, to show how they all refer to this 
one kind of mental action. 

The case of the orange illustrates what is usu- 
ally called Perception. It is the case in which the 
result is the knowledge of an actual object in the 
outside world. When the same process goes on 
after the actual object has been removed it is 
Memory. When it goes on again in a way which 
is not controlled by reference to such an outside 
object — usually it is a little fantastic, as in dreams 
or fancy, but often it is useful as being so well 
done as to anticipate what is really true in the 
outside world — then it is Imagination. If it is 
actually untrue, but still believed in, we call it Il- 
lusion or Hallucination. When it uses mere sym- 
bols, such as words, gestures, writing, etc., to 
stand for whole groups of things, it is Thinking 



WHAT OUR MINDS HAVE IN COMMON. 13 

or Reasoning-. So we may say that what the mind 
arrives at through this its one great way of act- 
ing, no matter which of these forms it takes on, 
except in the cases in which it is not true in its 
results to the realities, is Knowledge. 

Thus we see that the terms and faculties of 
the older psychology can be arranged under this 
doctrine of Apperception without the necessity of 
thinking of the mind as doing more than the one 
thing. It simply groups and combines its mate- 
rial in different ways and in ever higher degrees 
of complexity. 

Apperception, then, is the one principle of 
mental activity on the side of its reception and 
treatment of the materials of experience. 

There is another term very current in psychol- 
ogy by which this same process is sometimes in- 
dicated : the phrase Association of Ideas. This 
designates the fact that when two things have 
been perceived or thought of together, they tend 
to come up together in the mind in the future; 
and when a thing has been perceived which re- 
sembles another, or is contrasted with it, they 
tend to recall each other in the same way. It is 
plain, however, that this phrase is applied to the 
single thoughts, sensations, or other mental ma- 
terials, in their relations or connections among 
themselves. They are said to be " associated " 
with one another. This way of speaking of the 
mental materials, instead of speaking of the 
mind's activity, is convenient; and it is quite 
right to do so, since it is no contradiction to 
say that the thoughts, etc., which the mind " ap- 
perceives " remain " associated " together. From 
this explanation it is evident that the Association 
of Ideas also comes under the mental process 



14 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

of Apperception of which we have been speak- 
ing. 

There is, however, another tendency of the 
mind in the treatment of its material, a tendency 
which shows us in actual operation the activity 
with which we have now become familiar. When 
we come to look at any particular case of apper- 
ception or association we find that the process 
must go on from the platform which the mind's 
attainments have already reached. The passing 
of the mental states has been likened to a 
stream which flows on from moment to moment 
with no breaks. It is so continuous that we can 
never say : '' I will start afresh, forget the past, 
and be uninfluenced by my history." However 
we may wish this, we can never do it; for the 
oncoming current of the stream is just what we 
speak of as ourselves, and we can not avoid 
bringing the memories, imaginations, expecta- 
tions, disappointments, etc., up to the present. 
So the effect which any new event or experience, 
happening for the first time, is to have upon us 
depends upon the way it fits into the current of 
fhese onflowing influences. The man I see for 
the first time may be so neutral to me that I pass 
him unregarded. But let him return after I have 
once remarked him, or let him resemble a man 
whom I know, or let him give me some reason to 
observe, fear, revere, think of him in any way, 
then he is a positive factor in my stream. He 
has been taken up into the flow of my mental life, 
and he henceforth contributes something to it. 

For example, a little child, after learning to 
draw a man's face, with two eyes, the nose and 
mouth, and one ear on each side, will afterward, 
when told to draw a profile, still put in two eyes 



WHAT OUR MINDS HAVE IN COMMON. 15 

and affix an ear to each side. The drift of men- 
tal habit tells on the new result and he can not 
escape it. 

He will still put in the two eyes and two ears 
when he has before him a copy showing only one 
ear and neither eye. 

In all such cases the new is said to be Assimi- 
lated to the old. The customary figure for man 
in the child's memory assimilates the materials of 
the new copy set before him. 

Now this tendency is universal. The mind 
must assimilate its new material as much as pos- 
sible, thus making the old stand for the new. 
Otherwise there would be no containing the frag- 
mentary details which we should have to remem- 
ber and handle. Furthermore, it is through this 
tendency that we go on to form the great classes 
of objects — such as man, animal, virtue — into 
which numbers of similar details are put, and 
which we call General Notions or Concepts. 

We may understand by Assimilation, there- 
fore, the general tendency of new experiences to 
be treated by us in the ways which similar ma- 
terial has been treated before, with the result 
that the mind proceeds from the particular case 
to the general class. 

Summing up our outcome so far, we find that 
general psychology has reached three great prin- 
ciples in its investigation of knowledge. First, 
we have the combining tendency of the mind, the 
grouping together and relating of mental states 
and of things, called Apperception. Then, second, 
there are the particular relations established 
among the various states, etc., which are com- 
bined ; these are called Associatioiis of Ideas. 
And, third, there is the tendency of the mind to 



1 6 THE STORY OF THE MIND, 

use its old experiences and habits as general pat- 
terns or nets for the sorting out and distributing 
of all the new details of daily life; this is called 
Assimilation. 

II. Let us now turn to the second great aspect 
of the mind, as general or introspective psychol- 
ogy considers it, the aspect which presents itself 
in Action or conduct. The fact that we act is of 
course as important as the fact that we think or 
the fact that we feel ; and the distinction which 
separates thought and action should not be made 
too sharp. 

Yet there is a distinction. To understand 
action we must again go to introspection. This 
comes out as soon as we ask how we reach our 
knowledge of the actions of others. Of course, 
we say at once that we see them. And that is 
true; we do see them, while as to their thoughts 
we only infer them from what we see of their 
action. But, on the other hand, we may ask : 
How do we come to infer this or that thought 
from this or that action of another? The only 
reply is: Because when we act in the same way 
this is the way we feel. So we get back in any 
case to our own consciousness and must ask how 
is this action related to this thought in our own 
mind. 

To this question psychology has now a gen- 
eral answer : Our action is always the result of 
our thought, of the elements of knowledge which 
are at the time present in the mind. Of course, 
there are actions which we do from purely nerv- 
ous reasons. These are the Instincts, which come 
up again when we consider the animals. But 
these we may neglect so long as we are investi- 
gating actions which we consider our own. Apart 



WHAT OUR MINDS HAVE IN COMMON. 17 

from the Instincts, the prhiciple holds that behind 
every action which our conduct shows there must 
be something thought of, some sensation or 
knowledge then in mind, some feehng swelHng 
within our breast, which prompts to the action. 

This general principle is Motor Suggestion. 
It simply means that we are unable to have any 
thought or feeling whatever, whether it comes 
from the senses, from memory, from the words, 
conduct, or command of others, which does not 
have a direct influence upon our conduct. We 
are quite unable to avoid the influence of our own 
thoughts upon our conduct, and often the most 
trivial occurrences of our daily lives act as sug- 
gestions to deeds o£very great importance to our- 
selves and other^y ^For ej cample, the influence of 
the newspaper reports of crime stimulate other 
individuals to perform the same crimes by this 
principle of suggestion ; for the fact is that the 
reading of the report causes us to entertain the 
thoughts, and these thoughts tend to arouse in us 
their corresponding trains of suggested action. 

The most interesting and striking sphere of 
operation of the principle of Suggestion (of other 
sorts as well as motor) is what is commonly known 
simply as Hypnotism. To that, as well as to 
further illustrations of Suggestion, we will return 
later on. 

We are able, however, to see a little more in 
detail how the law of Motor Suggestion works 
by asking what sort of action is prompted in each 
case of thought or feeling, at the different levels 
of the mind's activity which have been distin- 
guished above as all illustrating Apperception — 
e.g., the stages known as Perception, Imagina- 
tion, Reasoninor etc. 



l8 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

We act, of course, on our perceptions constant- 
ly ; most of our routine life is made up of such ac- 
tion on the perceptions of objects which lie about 
us. The positions of things in the house, in the 
streets, in the office, in the store, are so well 
known that we carry out a series of actions with 
reference to these objects without much super- 
vision from our consciousness. Here the law of 
Motor Suggestion works along under the guidance 
of Perception, Memory, and the Association of 
Ideas. Then we find also, in much of our action, 
an element due to the exercise of the Imagination. 
We fill in the gaps in the world of perception by 
imagining appropriate connections; and we then 
act as if we knew that these imaginations were 
realities. ^^T^^ ^^ especially true in our inter- 
course with our fellow-men. \^Le never really 
know what they will do from time to time. Their 
action is still future and uncertain ; but from 
our familiarity with their character, we surmise or 
imagine what they expect or think, and we then 
act so as to make our conduct fit into theirs. 
Here is suggestion of a personal kind which de- 
pends upon our ability, in a sense, to reconstruct 
the character of others, leading us out into appro- 
priate action. This is the sphere of the most im- 
portant affairs of our lives. It appears especially 
so when we consider its connection with the next 
great sort of action from suggestion. 

This next and highest sphere is action from 
the general or abstract thoughts v/hich we have 
been able to work up by the apperceiving activity 
of the mind. In this sphere we have a special 
name for those thoughts which influence us directly 
and lead us to action : we call such thoughts 
Motives. Wc also have a special name for the 



WHAT OUR MINDS HAVE IN COMMON. 



19 



sort of action which is prompted by clearl}^- 
thought-out motives : Will. But in spite of this 
emphasis given to certain actions of ours as spring- 
ing from what is called Will, we must be careful 
to see that Will is not a new faculty, or capacity, 
added to mind, and which is different from the 
ways of action which the mind had before the 
Will arose. Will is only a name for the action 
upon suggestions of conduct which are so clear in 
our minds that we are able to deliberate upon 
them, acting only after some reflection, and so 
having a sense that the action springs from our 
own choice. The real reasons for action, how- 
ever, are thoughts, in this case, just as in the 
earlier cases they were. In this case we call them 
Motives; but we are dependent upon these Mo- 
tives, these Suggestions; we can not act without 
Motives, nor can we fail to act on those Motives 
which we have; just as, in the earlier cases, we 
could not act without some sort of Perceptions 
or Imaginations or Memories, and we could not 
fail to act on the Perceptions or other mental 
states which we had. Voluntary action or Will is 
therefore only a complex and very highly con- 
scious case of the general law of Motor Sugges- 
tion ; it is the form which suggested action takes 
on when Apperception is at its highest level. 

The converse of Suggestion is also true — that 
we can not perform an action without having in 
the mind at the time the appropriate thought, or 
image, or memory to suggest the action. This 
dependence of action upon the thought which the 
mind has at the time is conclusively shown in 
certain patients having partial paralysis. These 
patients find that when the eyes are bandaged 
they can not use their limbs, and it is simply be- 



20 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

cause they can not realize without seeing the Hmb 
how it would feel to move it; but open the eyes 
and let them see the limb — then they move it 
freely. A patient can not speak when the cor- 
tex of the brain is injured in the particular spot 
which is used in remembering how the words feel 
or sound when articulated. Many such cases lead 
to the general position that for each of our inten- 
tional actions we must have some way of thinking 
about the action, of remembering how it feels, 
looks, etc. ; we must have something in mind 
equivalent to the experience of the movement. 
This is called the principle of Kinaesthetic Equiv- 
alents, an expression which loses its formidable 
sound when we remember that " kinsesthetic " 
means having the feeling of movement; so the 
principle expresses the truth that we must in 
every case have some thought or mental picture 
in mind which is equivalent to the feeling of the 
movement we desire to make; if not, we can not 
succeed in making it. 

What we mean by the " freedom " of the will 
is not ability to do anything without thinking, 
but ability to think all the alternatives together 
and to act on this larger thought. Free action 
is the fullest expression of thought and of the 
Self which thinks it. 

It is interesting to observe the child getting 
his Equivalents day by day. He can not perform 
a new movement simply by wishing to do so; he 
has no Equivalents in his mind to proceed upon. 
But as he learns the action, gradually striking 
the proper movements one by one — oftenest by 
imitation, as we will see later on — he stores the 
necessary Equivalents up in his memory, and after- 
ward only needs to think how the movements 



WHAT OUR MINDS HAVE IN COMMON. 2 1 

feel or look, or how words sound, to be able to 
make the movements or speak the words forth- 
with. 

III. Introspection finds another great class of 
conditions in experience, again on the receptive 
side — conditions which convert the mind from the 
mere theatre of indifferent changes into the vital- 
ly interested, warmly intimate thing which our 
mental life is to each of us. This is the sphere 
of Feeling. We may see without more ado that 
while we are receiving sensations and thoughts 
and suggestions, and acting upon them in the va- 
riety of ways already pointed out, we ourselves 
are not indifferent spectators of this play, this 
come-and-go of processes. We are directly impli- 
cated ; indeed, the very sense of a self, an ego, a 
me-and-mine, in each consciousness, arises from 
the fact that all this come-and-go is a personal 
growth. The mind is not a mere machine doing 
what the laws of its action prescribe. We find 
that nothing happens which does not affect the 
mind itself for better or for worse, for richer or 
for poorer, for pleasure or for pain; and there 
spring up a series of attitudes of the mind itself, 
according as it is experiencing or expecting to 
experience what to it is good or bad. This is, 
then, the great meaning of Feeling; it is the sense 
in the mind that it is itself in some way influ- 
enced for good or for ill by what goes on within 
it. It stands midway between thought and ac- 
tion. We feel with reference to what we think, 
and we act because we feel. All action is guided 
by feeling. 

Feeling shows two well-marked characters: first, 
the Excitement of taking a positive attitude ; and, 
second, the Pleasure or Pain that goes with it. 



2 2 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

Here, again, it may suffice to distinguish the 
stages which arise as we go from the higher to the 
lower, from the life of Sensation and Perception 
up to that of Thought. This was our method in 
both of the other phases of the mental life — 
Knowledge and Action. Doing this, therefore, in 
the case of Feeling also, we find different terms 
applied to the different phases of feeling. In 
the lowest sort of mental life, as we may sup- 
pose the helpless newborn child to have it, and 
as we also think it exists in certain low forms 
of animal life, feeling is not much more than 
Pleasures and Pains depending largely upon the 
physical conditions under which life proceeds. 
It is likely that there are both Pleasures and 
Pains which are actually sensations with special 
nerve apparatus of their own; and there are also 
states of the Comfortable and the Uncomfortable, 
or of pleasant and unpleasant feeling, due to the 
way the mind is immediately affected. These are 
conditions of Excitement added to the Sensations 
of Pleasure and Pain. 

Coming up to the life of Memory and Imagina- 
tion, we find many great classes of Emotions tes- 
tifying to the attitudes which the mind takes 
toward its experiences. They are remarkably 
rich and varied, these emotions. Hope gives 
place to its opposite despair, joy to sorrow, and 
regret succeeds expectation. No one can enumer- 
ate the actual phases of the emotional life. The 
differences which are most pronounced — as be- 
tween hope and fear, joy and sorrow, anger and 
love — have special names, and their stimulating 
causes are so constant that they have also cer- 
tain fixed ways of showing themselves in the 
body, the so-called emotional Expressions, It is 



WHAT OUR MINDS HAVE IN COMMON. 23 

by these that we see and sympathize with the 
emotional states of other persons. The most that 
we have room here to say is that there is a con- 
stant ebb and flow, and that we rarely attain a 
state of relative freedom from the influence of 
emotion. 

The fixed bodily Expressions of .emotion are 
largely hereditary and common to man and the 
animals. It is highly probable that they first 
arose as attitudes useful in the animal's environ- 
ments for defence, flight, seizure, embrace, etc., 
and have descended to man as survivals, so be- 
coming indications of states of the mind. 

The final and highest manifestation of the 
life of feeling is what we call Sentiment. Senti- 
ment is aroused in response to certain so-called 
ideal states of thought. The trend of mental 
growth toward constantly greater adequacy in its 
knowledge leads it to anticipate conditions when 
its attainments will be made complete. There 
are certain sorts of reality whose completeness, 
thus imagined, arouses in us emotional states of 
the greatest power and value. The thought of 
God gives rise to the Religious sentiment, that of 
the good to the Ethical or Moral sentiment, that 
of the beautiful to the ^Esthetic sentiment. These 
sentiments represent the most refined and noble 
fruitage of the life of feeling, as the thoughts 
which they accompany refer to the most elevated 
and ideal objects. And it is equally true that the 
conduct which is performed under the inspiration 
of Sentiment is the noblest and most useful in 
which man can enofagfe. 



24 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE MIND OF THE ANIMAL COMPARATIVE 

PSYCHOLOGY. 

It has already been pointed out that the ani- 
mal has a very important share of the endowment 
which we call mind. Only recently has he been 
getting his due. He was formerly looked upon, 
under the teachings of a dualistic philosophy and 
of a jealous humanity, as a soulless machine, a 
mere automaton which was moved by the starting 
of certain springs to run on until the machine ran 
down. There are two reasons that this viev/ has 
been given up, each possibly important enough to 
have accomplished the revolution and to have 
given rise to Animal Psychology. 

First, there is the rise of the evolution theory, 
which teaches that there is no absolute break be- 
tween man and the higher animals in the matter 
of mental endowment, and that what difference 
there is must itself be the result of the laws of 
mental growth ; and the second reason is that the 
more adequate the science of the human mind 
has become the more evident has it also become 
that man himself is more of a machine than had 
been supposed. Man grows by certain laws; his 
progress is conditioned by the environment, both 
physical and social, in which he lives; his mind is 
a part of the natural system of things. So with 
the animal. The animal fulfils, as far as he can, 
the same sort of function; he has his environ- 
ment, both physical and social ; he works under 
the same laws of growth which man also obeys; 
his mind exhibits substantially the same phenom- 



THE MIND OF THE ANIMAL. 25 

ena which the human mind exhibits in its early 
stages in the child. All this means that the ani- 
mal has as good right to recognition, as a mind- 
bearing creature, so to speak, as the child ; and if 
we exclude him we should also exclude the child. 
Further, this also means — what is more important 
for the science of psychology — that the develop- 
ment of the mind in its early stages and in certain 
of its directions of progress is revealed most ade- 
quately in the animals. 

Aniinal Instinct. — Turning to the animals, the 
first thing to strike us is the remarkable series 
of so-called animal Instincts. Everybody knows 
what animal instincts are like ; it is only necessary 
to go to a zoological garden to see them in oper- 
ation on a large scale. Take the house cat and 
follow her through the life of a single day, observ- 
ing her actions. She washes her face and makes 
her toilet in the morning by instinct. She has her 
peculiar instinctive ways of catching the mouse 
for breakfast. She whets her appetite by hold- 
ing back her meal possibly for an hour, in the 
meantime playing most cruelly with the pitiful 
mouse, letting it run and catching it again, and 
doing this over and over. If she has children 
she attends to their training in the details of cat 
etiquette and custom with the utmost care, all by 
instinct; and the kittens instinctively respond to 
her attentions. She conducts herself during the 
day with remarkable cleanliness of life, making 
arrangements which civilized man follows with 
admiration. She shows just the right abhorrence 
of water for a creature that is not able to swim. 
She knows just what enemies to fly from and when 
to turn and fight, using with inborn dexterity her 
formidable claws. She prefers nocturnal excur- 



26 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

sions and sociabilities, having eyes which make it 
safe to be venturesome in the dark. She has cer- 
tain vocal expressions of her emotions, which man 
in vain attempts to eradicate with all the agencies 
of domestication. She has special arts to attract 
her mate, and he in turn is able to charm her with 
songs which charm nobody else. And so on, al- 
most ad infinitum. 

Observe the dog, the birds of different species, 
the monkeys, the hares, and you find wonderful 
differences of habit, each adapting the animal 
differently, but with equal effectiveness, to the life 
which he in particular is called upon to lead. The 
ants and bees are notoriously expert in the matter 
of instinct. They have colonies in which some of 
the latest principles of social organization seem 
to find analogues: slavery, sexual regulations, 
division of labour, centralization of resources, 
government distribution of food, capital punish- 
ment, etc. 

All this — not to stop upon details which the 
books on animal life give in great abundance- 
has furnished grounds for speculation for centu- 
ries, and it is only in the last fifty years that the 
outlines of a theory of instinct have been filled in 
with substantial knowledge. A rapid sketch of 
this theory may be drawn in the following pages. 

I. In instinct in general there is a basis of in- 
herited nervous tendency toward the performance 
of just the sort of action which the instinct ex- 
hibits. This nervous tendency shows itself inde- 
pendently of learning by the individual in a great 
many cases, as in the instinct of sucking by young 
animals, pecking for food by young fowls, the mi- 
grating actions of adult mammals and birds, the 
courting movements of many varieties of animal 



THE MIND OF THE ANIMAL. 27 

species. In all this we have what is called the 
" perfect " instinct. To be perfect, an instinct 
must be carried out successfully by the animal 
when his organism is ready, without any instruc- 
tion, any model to imitate, any experience to go 
upon. The "perfect" instincts are entirely con- 
genital or inborn ; the nervous apparatus only 
needs to reach the proper stage of maturity or 
growth, and forthwith the instinctive action is 
performed as soon as the external conditions of 
life are such as to make its performance appro- 
priate and useful. 

2. On the other hand, many instincts — indeed, 
probably the greater number — are not perfect, 
but " imperfect." Imperfect instincts are those 
which do not fully equip the animal with the 
function in question, but only take him part way 
to the goal. He has a spontaneous tendency to 
do certain things, such as building a nest, singing, 
etc. ; but he is not able to do these things ade- 
quately or perfectly if left to himself from birth. 
This sort of endowment with imperfect instincts 
has been the field of some of the most interesting 
research in animal psychology, and has led to a 
new view of the relation of instinct to intelligence. 

3. It has been found that young animals, birds, 
etc., depend upon the example and instruction of 
adults for the first performance of many actions 
that seem to be instinctive. This dependence may 
exist even in cases in which there is yet a congeni- 
tal tendency to perform the action. Many birds, 
for example, have a general instinct to build a 
nest ; but in many cases, if put in artificial cir- 
cumstances, they build imperfect nests. Birds also 
have an instinct to make vocal calls; but if kept 
from birth out of hearing of the peculiar notes of 



28 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

their species, they come to make cries of a differ- 
ent sort, or learn to make the notes of some other 
species with which they are thrown. 

4. The principal agency for the learning of the 
animals, and for the supplementing of their in- 
stincts, is Imitation. The sight of certain move- 
ments on the part of the adult animals, or the 
hearing of their cries, calls, notes, etc., leads the 
young to fall into an imitation of these movements 
or vocal performances. The endowment which 
such a young animal has in the direction of mak- 
ing movements and cries similar to those of his 
species aids him, of course, in imitating these in 
preference to others. So the endowment and the 
tendency to imitate directly aid each other in all 
such functions, and hurry the little creature on in 
his acquisition of the habits of his species. We 
find young animals clinging even in their imi- 
tations pretty closely to their own proper fathers 
and mothers, who are thus enabled to bring them 
up comme il faiit. 

5. There is every reason to think, moreover, 
that the tendency to imitate is itself instinctive. 
Young animals, notably the monkey and the child, 
fall spontaneously to imitating when they reach a 
certain age. Imitation shows itself to be instinct- 
ive in the case of the mocking bird, the parrot, 
etc. Furthermore, the mechanism of this func- 
tion of imitation is now very well known. The 
principle of psychology recognised above under 
the phrase Kinaesthetic Equivalents, teaches us 
that the idea of a movement, coming into the mind 
through sight or some other sense, stirs up the 
proper apparatus to bring about the same move- 
ment in the observer. This we see in the com- 
mon tendency of an audience to repeat the ges- 



THE MIND OF THE ANIMAL. 29 

tures of a speaker, and in many similar cases. 
When this principle is extended to include all 
sorts of experiences besides those of movement, 
we have what is generally called Imitation. More- 
over, every time that by action the child imitates, 
he perceives his own imitation, and this again acts 
as a "copy" or model for another repetition of 
the act, and so on. This method of keeping him- 
self going gives the young animal or child con- 
stant practice, and renders him more and more 
efficient in the acts necessary to his life. 

6. It is evident what great profit accrues from 
this arrangement whereby a general instinct like 
imitation takes the place of a number of spe- 
cial instincts, or supplements them. It gives a 
measure of plasticity to the creature. He can 
now respond suitably to changes in the environ- 
ment in which he lives. The special instincts, on 
the contrary, are for the most part so fixed that 
the animal must act just as they require him to in 
this or that circumstance; but as soon as his in- 
stinct takes on the form of imitation, the result- 
ing action tends to conform itself to the model 
actions of the other creatures which set " copies " 
before him. 

These more or less new results due to recent 
research in the province of Instinct have had 
direct bearing upon theories of the origin of in- 
stinct and of its place in animal life. 

Theoj^es of Instinct. — Apart from the older 
view which saw in animal instinct simply a mat- 
ter of original created endowment, whereby each 
animal was made once for all " after his kind," 
and according to which there is no further reason 
that the instincts are what they are than that 
they were made so ; apart from this " special crea- 



30 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

tion " view, two different ideas have had currency, 
both based upon the theory of evolution. Eacii 
of these views assumes tnat the instincts have 
been developed from more simple animal actions 
by a gradual process; but they differ as to the ele- 
ments originally entering into the actions which 
afterward became instinctive. 

I. First, there is what is called the Reflex 
Theory. This holds that instincts are reflex ac- 
tions, like the closing of the eye when an object 
threatens to enter it, only much more complex. 
They are due to the compounding and adding to- 
gether of simple reflexes, in greater and greater 
number, and with increasing efficiency. This 
theory attempts to account for instinct entirely 
in terms of nervous action. It goes with that 
view of evolution which holds that the nervous 
system has had is growth from generation to gen- 
eration by the continued reflex adjustments of the 
organism to its environment, whereby more and 
more delicate adaptations to the external world 
were secured. In this way, say the advocates of 
this theory, we may account for the fact that the 
animal has no adequate knowledge of what he 
is doing when he performs an act instinctively ; 
he has no end or aim in his mind ; he simply feels 
his nervous system doing what it is fitted to do 
by its organic adaptations to the stimulations of 
air, and earth, and sea, whatever these may be. 

But it may be asked : Why do succeeding gen- 
erations improve each on its parents, so that there 
is a gradual tendency to perfect the instinct ? 

The answer to this question brings up another 
great law of biology — the principle of Variations. 
This principle states the common fact that in every 
case of a family of offspring the individual young 



THE MIND OF THE ANIMAL. 3 1 

vary slightly in all directions from their parents. 
Admitting this, we will find in each group of fami- 
lies some young individuals which are better than 
their parents ; these will have the advantage over 
others and will be the ones to grow up and have 
the children of the next generation again, and so 
on. So by constant Variation and Natural Selec- 
tion — that is, the " Survival of the Fittest " in 
competition with the rest — there will be constant 
improvement in the Instinct. 

2. The other theory, the rival one, holds that 
there are some instincts which show so plainly 
the marks of Reason that some degree of intelli- 
gent adjustment to the environment must be al- 
lowed to the animal in the acquiring of these 
functions. For example, we are told that some 
of the muscular movements involved in the in- 
stincts — such, for example, as the bird's nest- 
building — are so complex and so finely adjusted 
to an end, that it is straining belief to suppose 
that they could have arisen gradually by reflex 
adaptation alone. There is also a further difficulty 
with the reflex theory which has seemed insur- 
mountable to many of the ablest psychologists of 
animal life; the difficulty, namely, that many of 
the instincts require the action of a great many 
muscles at the same time, so acting in "correla- 
tion " with or support of one another that it is 
impossible to suppose that the instinct has been 
acquired gradually. For in the very nature of 
these cases we can not suppose the instinct to 
have ever been imperfect, seeing that the partial 
instinct which would have preceded the perfect 
performance for some generations would have 
been not only of no use to the creature, but in 
many cases positively injurious. For instance, 



32 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

what use to an animal to be able partly to make 
the movements of swimming, or to the birds to 
build an inadequate nest ? Such instincts would 
not be usable at all. So we are told by the sec- 
ond theory that the animals must have had intel- 
ligence to do these things when they first acquired 
them. Yet, as is everywhere admitted, after the 
instinct has been acquired by the species it is then 
carried out without knowledge and intelligent de- 
sign, being handed down from generation to gen- 
eration by heredity. 

This seems reasonable, for we do find that 
actions which were at first intelligent may be per- 
formed so frequently that we come to do them 
without thinking of them ; to do them from habit. 
So the animals, we are told, have come to do 
theirs reflexly, although at first they required in- 
telligence. From this point of view — that al- 
though intelligence was at first required, yet the 
actions have become instinctive and lacking in 
intelligent direction in later generations — this is 
called the theory of Lapsed Intelligence. 

This theory has much to commend it. It cer- 
tainly meets the objection to the reflex theory 
which was stated just above — the objection that 
some of the instincts could not have arisen by 
gradual reflex adaptations. It also accounts for 
the extremely intelligent appearance which many 
instincts have. 

But this view in turn is liable to a criticism 
which has grown in force with the progress of bio- 
logical knowledge in recent years. This criticism 
is based on the fact that the theory of lapsed intel- 
ligence demands that the actions which the animals 
of one generation have acquired by their intelli- 
gence should be handed down through heredity 



THE MIND OF THE ANIMAL. 33 

to the next generation, and so on. It is evident 
that unless this be true it does no good to the spe- 
cies for one generation to do things intelligently, 
seeing that if the effects on the nervous system 
are not transmitted to their children, then the 
next and later generations will have to start ex- 
actly where their fathers did, and the actions 
in question will never become ingrained in the 
nervous system at all. 

Now, the force of this criticism is overwhelm- 
ing to those who believe— as the great majority 
of biologists now do * — that none of the modifica- 
tions or so-called "characters" acquired by the 
parents, none of the effects of use or disuse of 
their limbs, none of the tendencies or habits of 
action, in short, none of the changes wrought in 
body or mind of the parents during their lifetime, 
are inherited by their children. The only sorts 
of modification which show themselves in subse- 
quent generations are the deep-seated effects of 
disease, poison, starvation, and other causes 
which concern the system as a whole, but which 
show no tendency to reproduce by heredity any 
of the special actions or functions which the 
fathers and mothers may have learned and prac- 
tised. If this difficulty could be met, the theory 
that intelligence has been at work in the origina- 
tion of the complex instincts would be altogether 
the preferable one of the two ; but if not, then 
the " lapsed intelligence " view must be thrown 
overboard. 

Recent discussion of evolution has brought 



* The matter is still under discussion, however, and I do 
not mean in any way to deny the authority of those who still 
accept the "inheritance of acquired characters." 



34 



THE STORY OF THE MIND. 



out a point of view under the name of Organic 
Selection which has a very fruitful application 
to this controversy over the origin of instincts. 
This point of view is one which in a measure 
reconciles the two theories. It claims that it is 
possible for the intelligent adaptations, or any 
sort of " accommodations," made by the indi- 
viduals of one generation, to set the direction of 
subsequent evolution, even though there be no 
direct inheritance of acquired characters from 
father to son. It proceeds in the case of instinct 
somewhat thus : 

Suppose we say, with the first theory given 
above, that the organism has certain reflexes 
which show some degree of adaptation to the 
environment ; then suppose we admit the point, 
urged by the advocates of the lapsed intelligence 
theory, that the gradual improvement of these 
reflexes by variations in the endowment of suc- 
cessive generations would not suffice for the 
origin of instinct, seeing that partial instincts 
would not be useful; and, further, suppose we 
agree that many of the complex instincts really 
involved intelligent adaptation in their acquisi- 
tion. These points carefully understood, then 
one new and further principle will enable us to 
complete a theory which will avoid the objec- 
tions to both the others. This principle is noth- 
ing else than what we have seen already — namely, 
that the intelligence supplements the partial in- 
stincts in each generation and makes them useful 
in the respects in which they are inadequate, and 
so keeps the young alive in successive genera- 
tions as long as the instinct is imperfect. This 
gives the species time gradually to supplement its 
instinctive endowment, in the course of many 



THE MIND OF THE ANIMAL. 



35 



generations each of which uses its intelHgence 
in the same way : time to accumulate, by the oc- 
currence of variations among the offspring, the 
changes in the nervous system which the perfect 
instinct requires. Thus as time goes on the de- 
pendence of each generation upon the aid of in- 
telligence is less and less, until the nervous sys- 
tem becomes capable of performing the function 
quite alone. The result then will be the same as 
if the acquisitions made by each generation had 
been inherited, w^hile in reality they have not. 
All that this theory requires in addition to what 
is admitted by both the historical views is that 
the species be kept alive long enough by the aid 
of its intelligence, which supplements imperfect 
instincts, to give it time to produce sufficient va- 



FlG. I. — Origin of instinct by Organic Selection : A n, perfect in- 
stinct. I, 2 . . . ;«, successive generations. Solid lines, nerv- 
ous equipment in the direction of the instinct. Dotted lines, 
intelligence supplementing the nervous equipment. The intel- 
ligence is relied upon to keep the species alive until by congeni- 
tal variations the nervous equipment becomes " perfect." 



riations in the right direction. The instinct then 
achieves its independence, and intelligent super- 
vision of it is no longer necessary (see Fig. i). 



36 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

This theory is directly confirmed by the facts, 
already spoken of, which show that many instincts 
are imperfect, but are pieced out and made effec- 
tive by the intelligent imitations and acquisitions 
of the young creatures. The little chick, for ex- 
ample, does not know the value of water when he 
sees it, as essential as water is to his life; but he 
depends upon imitation of his mother's drinking, 
or upon the mere accident of wetting his bill, to 
stimulate his partial instinct of drinking in the 
peculiar fashion characteristic of fowls, by throw- 
ing back the head. So in other functions which 
are peculiar to a species and upon which their 
very lives depend, we find the delicate adjust- 
ment between intelligent adaptation by conscious 
action and the partially formed instincts which 
the creatures possess. 

In the theory of Organic Selection, therefore, 
we seem to have a positive solution of the ques- 
tion of the origin of instinct. It is capable of a 
similar application in other cases where evolution 
has taken certain definite directions, seemingly 
guided by intelligence. It shows us that mind 
has had a positive place in the evolution of 
organic nature. 

Animal I ntellige7ice. — Coming to consider what 
further equipment the animals have, we light upon 
the fact just spoken of when we found it neces- 
sary to appeal in some measure to the animal's 
Intelligence to supplement his instincts. What is 
meant by Intelligence ? 

This word may be used in the broad sense of 
denoting all use of consciousness, or mind, con- 
sidered as a thing in some way additional to the 
reflexes of the nervous system. In the life of the 



THE MIND OF THE ANIMAL. 37 

animal, as in that of man, wherever we find the 
individual doing anything with reference to a 
mental picture, using knowledge or experience in 
any form, then he is said to be acting intelli- 
gently. 

The simplest form of intelligent action in the 
animal world and that from which most of the 
higher forms have arisen is illustrated in the fol- 
lowing example : a chick will peck at a strange 
worm, and, finding it unpalatable, will then in the 
future refuse to peck at worms of that sort. This 
refusal to do a second time what has once had a 
disagreeable result is intelligent. We now say 
that the chick " knows " that the worm is not 
good to eat. The instinctive action of pecking 
at all worms is replaced by a refusal to peck at 
certain worms. Again, taking the reverse case, 
we find that the chick which did not respond to 
the sight of drinking water instinctively, but had 
to see the mother drink first, acted intelligently, 
or through a state of consciousness, when it imi- 
tated the old hen, and afterward drank of its own 
accord. It now "knows" that water is the thing 
to drmk. 

The further question which comes upon us 
here concerns the animal's acquisition of the 
action appropriate to carry out his knowledge. 
How does he learn the muscular combinations 
which supplement or replace the earlier instinctive 
ways of acting? 

This question appears very clearly when we ask 
about the child's acquisition of new acts of skill. 
We find him constantly learning, modifying his 
habits, refining his ways of doing things, becom- 
ing possessed of quite new and complex functions, 
such as speech, handwriting, etc. All these are 



38 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

intelligent activities ; they are learned very gradu- 
ally and with much effort and pains. It is one of 
the most important and interesting questions of 
all psychology to ask how he manages to bring 
the nervous and muscular systems under greater 
and greater control by his mind. How can he 
modify and gradually improve his " reactions " — 
as we call his responses to the things and situa- 
tions about him — so as to act more and more 
intelligently ? 

The answer seems to be that he proceeds by 
what has been called Experimenting. He does 
not simply do things because he has intelligence, 
— simply that is, because he sees how to do them 
without first learning how; that is the older and 
probably quite erroneous view of intelligence. 
The mind can not move the body simply by its 
fiat. No man can do that. Man, like the little ani- 
mal, has to try things and keep on trying things, 
in order to find out the way they work and what 
their possibilities are. And each animal, man, 
beast, or bird has to do it for himself. Apart 
from the instinctive actions which the child does 
without knowing their value at all, and apart 
from the equally instinctive imitative way of do- 
ing them without aiming at learning more by the 
imitations, he proceeds in all cases to make experi- 
ments. Generally his experiments work through 
acts of imitation. He imitates what he sees some 
other creature do ; or he imitates his own instinc- 
tive actions by setting up before him in his mind 
the memories of the earlier performance; or, yet 
again, after he has struck a fortunate combina- 
tion, he repeats that imitatively. Thus, by the 
principle already spoken of, he stores up a great 
mass of Kinaesthetic Equivalents, which linger in 



THE MIND OF THE ANIMAL. 39 

memory, and enable him to act appropriately 
when the proper circumstances come in his way. 
He also gets what we have called Associations 
established between the acts and the pleasure or 
pain which they give, and so avoids the painful 
and repeats the pleasurable ones. 

The most fruitful field of this sort of imitative 
learning is in connection with the '' try-try-again " 
struggles of the young, especially children. This 
is called Persistent Imitation. The child sees be- 
fore him some action to imitate — some complex 
act of manipulation with the hand, let us say. 
He tries to perform it in an experimental way, 
using the muscles of the hand and arm. With 
this he strains himself all over, twisting his 
tongue, bending his body, and grimacing from 
head to foot, so to speak. Thus he gets a cer- 
tain way toward the correct result, but very 
crudely and inexactly. Then he tries again, pro- 
ceeding now on the knowledge which the first 
effort gave him ; and his trial is less uncouth 
because he now suppresses some of the hinder- 
ing grimacing movements and retains the ones 
which he sees to be most nearly correct. Again 
he tries, and again, persistently but gradually 
reducing the blundering movements to the pat- 
tern of the copy, and so learning to perform the 
act of skill. 

The massive and diffused movements which 
he makes by wriggling and fussing are also of 
direct use to him. They increase remarkably the 
chances that among them all there will be some 
movements which will hit the mark, and so con- 
tribute to his stock of correct Equivalents. Dogs 
and monkeys learn to unlock doors, let down 
fence rails, and perform relatively complex ac- 
4 



40 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

tions by experimenting persistently with many 
varied movements until the successful ones are 
finally struck. 

This is the type of all those acts of experi- 
menting by which new complex movements are 
acquired. In children it proceeds largely with- 
out interference from others; the child persists 
of himself. He has greater ability than the ani- 
mals to see the meaning of the completed act 
and to really desire to acquire it. With the ani- 
mals the acquisitions do not extend very far, on 
account of their limitation in intelligent endow- 
ment; but in 'the training of the domestic ani- 
mals and in the education of show-animals the 
trainer aids them and urges them on by making 
use of the associations of pleasure and pain 
spoken of above. He supplements the animal's 
feelings of pain and pleasure with the whip and 
with rewards of food, etc., so that each step of 
the animal's success or failure has acute asso- 
ciations with pain or pleasure. Thus the animal 
gradually gets a number of associations formed, 
avoids the actions with which pain is associated, 
repeats those which call up memories of pleasure 
all the way through an extended performance in 
regular steps; and in the result the performance 
so closely counterfeits the operations of high in- 
telligence — such as counting, drawing cards, etc. 
— that the audience is excited to admiration. 

This first glimpse of the animal's limitations 
when compared with man may suggest the gen- 
eral question, how far the brutes go in their intel- 
hgent endowment. The proper treatment of this 
much-debated point requires certain further ex- 
planations. 

In the child we find a tendency to act in cer- 



THE MIND OF THE ANIMAL. 4 1 

tain ways toward all objects, events, etc., which 
are in any respect alike. After learning to use 
the hands, for example, for a certain act, the same 
hand movements are afterward used for other 
similar acts which the child finds it well to per- -N/ 
form. He thus tends, as psychologists say,* to \/ 
"generalize," that is, to take up certain general 
attitudes which will answer for a great many de- 
tails of experience. On the side of the reception 
of his items of knowledge this was called Assimi- 
lation, as will be remembered. This saves him 
enormous trouble and risk; for as soon as an 
object or situation presents itself before him with 
certain general aspects, he can at once take up 
the attitude appropriate to these general aspects 
without waiting to learn the particular features 
of the new. The ability to do this shows itself 
in two rather different ways which seem respec- 
tively to characterize man on the one hand and 
the lower animals on the other. 

With the animals this tendency to generalize, 
to treat objects in classes rather than as indi- 
viduals, takes the form of a sort of composition 
or direct union of brain pathways. Different 
experiences are had, and then because they are 
alike they tend to issue in the same channels of 
action. The animal is tied down strictly to his 
experience ; he does not anticipate to any extent 
what is going to happen. He does not use one 
experience as a symbol and apply it beforehand 
to other things and events. He is in a sense 
passive; stimulations rain down upon him, and 
force him into certain attitudes and ways of 
action. As far as his knowledge is "general" it 
is called a Recept. A dog has a Recept of the 
whip ; so far as whips are not too different from 



42 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

one another, the dog will act in the same way 
toward all of them. In man, on the other hand, 
the development of mind has gone a decided step 
further. The child very quickly begins to use 
symbols, words being the symbols of first im- 
poftance to him. He does not have, like the 
brute, to wait for successive experiences of like 
objects to impress themselves upon him ; but he 
goes out toward the new, expecting it to be like 
the old, and so acting as to anticipate it. He 
thus falls naturally into general ways of acting 
which it is the function of experience to refine 
and distinguish. He seems to have more of the 
higher sort of what was called above Appercep- 
tion, as opposed to the more concrete and acci- 
dental Associations of Ideas. He gets Concepts, 
as opposed to the Recepts of the animals. With 
this goes the development of speech, which some 
psychologists consider the source of all the man's 
superiority over the animals. Words become sym- 
bols of a highly abstract sort for certain classes 
of experiences; and, moreover, through speech a 
means of social communication is afforded by 
which the development of the individual is enor- 
mously advanced. 

It is probable, in fact, that this difference — 
that between the Generalization which uses sym- 
bols, and mere Association — is the root of all the 
differences that follow later on, and give man the 
magnificent advantage over the animals which he 
has. From it is developed the faculty of think- 
ing, reasoning, etc., in which man stands practi- 
cally alone. On the brain side, it requires special 
developments both through the preparation of 
certain brain centres given over to the speech 
function, and also through the greater organiza- 



THE MIND OF THE ANIMAL. 43 

tion of the gray matter of the cerebral cortex, 
to which we revert again in a later chapter. In- 
deed, looked at from the. side of the development 
of the brain, we see that there is no break be- 
tween man and the animals in the laws of or- 
ganization, but that the difference is one of evo- 
lution. 

Later on in the life of the child we find an- 
other contrast connected with the difference of 
social life and organization as between the ani- 
mals and man. The animals probably do not 
have a highly organized sense of Self as man 
does; and the reason doubtless is that such a 
Self-consciousness is the outcome of life and ex- 
perience in the very complex social relations in 
which the human child is brought up, and which 
he alone is fitted by his inherited gifts to sustain. 

The Play of Animals. — Another of the most in- 
teresting questions of animal life is that which 
concerns their plays. Most animals are given to 
play. Indeed that they indulge in a remarkable 
variety of sports is well known even to the novice 
in the study of their habits. Beginning when very 
young, they gambol, tussle, leap, and run together, 
chase one another, play with inanimate objects, as 
the kitten with the ball, join in the games of chil- 
dren and adults, as the dog which plays hide and 
seek with his little master, and all with a knowing- 
ness and zest which makes them the best of com- 
panions. The volumes devoted to the subject 
give full accounts of these plays of animals, and 
we need not repeat them ; the psychologist is 
interested, however, mainly in the general func- 
tion of play in the life of the individual animal 
and child, and in the psychological states and 
motives which it reveals. Play, whether in ani- 



44 - THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

mals or in man, shows certain general character- 
sties which we may briefly consider. 

1. The plays of animals are very largely in- 
stinctive, being indulged in for the most part 
without instruction. The kitten leaps impulsively 
to the game. Little dogs romp untaught, and 
fall, as do other animals also, when they are 
strong enough, into all the playful attitudes which 
mark their kind. This is seen strikingly among 
adult animals in what are called the courtship 
plays. The birds, for example, indulge in elab- 
orate and beautiful evolutions of a playful sort 
at the mating season. 

2. It follows from their instinctive character 
that animal plays are peculiar to the species 
which perform them. We find series of sports 
peculiar to dogs, others to cats, and so on through 
all the species of the zoological garden, whether 
the creatures be wild or tame. Each shows its 
species as clearly by its sportive habits as by its 
shape, cry, or any other of what are called its 
" specific " habits. This is important not only to 
the zoologist, as indicating differences of evolu- 
tion and scale of attainment, environment, etc., 
but also to the psychologist, as indicating differ- 
ences of what we may call animal temperament. 
Animals show not only the individual differences 
which human beings do, one liking this game and 
another that, one being leader in the sport and 
another the follower, but also the greater differ- 
ences which characterize races. The Spaniards 
love the bull fight; other nations consider it re- 
pulsive, and take their fun in less brutal forms, 
although, perchance, they tolerate Rugby foot- 
ball ! So the animals vary in their tastes, some 
playing incessantly at fighting, and so zealously 



THE MIND OF THE ANIMAL. 45 

as to injure one another, while others like the 
milder romp, and the game with flying leaves, 
rolling stones, or the incommg waves on the 
shore. 

3. Psychologically, the most interesting char- 
acteristic of animal, as of human, play is what is 
called the " make-believe " state of mind which 
enters into it. If we consider our own sports we 
find that, in the midst of the game, we are in a 
condition of divided consciousness. We indulge 
in the scheme of play, whatever it be, as if it were 
a real situation, at the same time preserving our 
sense that it is not real. That is, we distinguish 
through it all the actual realities, but make the 
convention with our companions that for the 
time we will act together as if the playful situation 
were real. With it there is a sense that it is a mat- 
ter of voluntary indulgence that can stop at 
anytime; that the whole temporary illusion to 
which we submit is strictly our own doing, a job 
which we have "put up " on ourselves. That is 
what is meant by make-believe. 

Now it is clear that the animals have this 
sense of make-believe in their games both with 
other animals and with man. The dog plays at 
biting the hand of his master, and actually takes 
the member between his teeth and mumbles it; 
but all the while he stops short of painful pres- 
sure, and goes through a series of characteristic 
attitudes which show that he distinguishes very 
clearly between this play biting and the real. If 
perchance the master shows signs of being hurt, 
the dog falls into attitudes of sorrow, and apolo- 
gizes fulsomely. So also when the animals play 
together, a vigorous squeal from a companion 
who is " under" generally brings him his release. 



46 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

The principal interest of this make-believe 
consciousness is that it is considered by many to 
be an essential ingredient of ^Esthetic feeling. 
A work of art is said to have its effect through 
its tendency to arouse in us a make-believe ac- 
ceptance of the scene or motive presented, while 
it nevertheless remains contrasted with the re- 
alities of our lives. If this be true, the interest- 
ing question arises how far the animals also have 
the germs of yi^sthetic feeling in their make-be- 
lieve situations. Does the female pea-fowl con- 
sider the male bird, with all his display of colour 
and movement, a beautiful object ? And does 
the animal companion say : How beautiful ! w^hen 
his friend in the sport makes a fine feint, and 
comes up serene with the knowing look, which 
the human on-looker can not fail to understand ? 

In some cases, at any rate, we should have to 
reply to this question affirmatively, if we con- 
sidered make-believe the essential thing in aesthet- 
ic enjoyment. 

Theories of Animal Play. — The question of the 
meaning and value of play to the animals has 
had very enlightening discussion of late. There 
are two principal theories now advocated. 

I. The older theory considered play simply 
the discharge of surplus nerve force in the ani- 
mal's organism. He was supposed to play when 
he felt fresh and vigorous. The horse is "skit- 
tish" and playful in the morning, not so much so 
at night. The dogs lie down and rest when they 
are tired, having used up their surplus energies. 
This is called the Surplus-Energy Theory of 
play. 

The difficulty with this theory is that it is not 
adequate to explain any of the characteristics of 



THE MIND OF THE ANIMAL. 47 

play which have been given above. Why should 
play be instinctive in its forms, showing certain 
complex and ingrained channels of expression, if 
it were merely the discharge of surplus force ? We 
are more lively in the morning, but that does not 
explain our liking and indulging in certain sorts of 
complex games at all hours. Moreover, animals 
and children will continue to play when greatly 
fatigued. A dog, for example, which seems ab- 
solutely "used up," can not resist the renewed 
solicitations of his friends to continue the chase. 
Furthermore, why is it that plays are character- 
istic of species, different kinds of animals having 
plays quite peculiar to themselves ? It is difficult 
to see how this could have come about unless 
there had been some deeper-going reason in ac- 
cordance with which each species has learned the 
particular forms of sport in which it indulges. 

The advocates of this theory attempt to meet 
these objections by saying that the imitative in- 
stinct accounts for the particular directions in 
which the discharges of energy occur. A kitten's 
plays are like those of the cat tribe because the 
kitten is accustomed to imitate cats ; when it falls 
to playing it is with cats, and so it sheds its 
superfluous energies in the customary imitative 
channels. In this way it grows to learn the 
games of its own species. There is a good deal 
in this point ; most games are imitative in so far 
as they are learned at all. But it does not save 
the theory ; for many animal plays are not learned 
by the individual at all, as we have seen above ; 
on the contrary, they are instinctive. In these 
cases the animal does not wait to learn the games 
of his tribe by imitation, but starts-right-in on 
his own account. Besides this there are many 



48 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

forms of animal play which are not imitative at 
all. In these the animals co-operate, but do not 
take the same parts. The young perform actions 
in the game which the mother does not. 

All this goes to support another and most 
serious objection to this theory — in the mind of 
all those who believe in the doctrine of evolution. 
The Surplus-Energy Theory considers the play- 
impulse, which is one of the most widespread char- 
acters of animal life, as merely an accidental 
thing or by-product — a mere using-up of surplus 
energies. It is not in any way important to the 
animals. This makes it impossible to say that play 
has come to be the very complex thing that it 
really is by the laws of evolution ; for survival by 
natural selection always supposes that the attri- 
bute or character which survives is important 
enough to keep the animal alive in the struggle 
for existence ; otherwise it would not be con- 
tinued for successive generations, and gradually 
perfected on account of its utility. 

On the whole, therefore, we find the Surplus- 
Energy Theory of play quite inadequate. 

II. Another theory therefore becomes neces- 
sary if we are to meet these difficulties. Such a 
theory has recently been developed. It holds 
that the plays of the animals are of the greatest 
utility to them in this way : they exercise the 
young animals in the very activities — though in a 
playful wa}^ — in which they must seriously engage 
later on in life. A survey of the plays of animals 
with a view to comparing them in each case with 
the adult activities of the same species, confirms 
this theory in a remarkably large number of cases. 
It shows the young anticipating, in their play, 
the struggles, enjoyments, co-operations, defeats, 



THE MIND OF THE ANIMAL. 49 

emergencies, etc., of their after lives, and by 
learning to cope with all these situations, so pre- 
paring themselves for the serious onset of adult 
responsibilities. On this theory each play be- 
comes a beautiful case of adaptation to nature. 
The kitten plays with the ball as the old cat 
handles the mouse ; the little dogs wrestle to- 
gether, and so learn to fight with teeth and 
claws; the deer run from one another, and so 
test their speed and learn to escape their ene- 
mies. If we watch young animals at play we see 
that not a muscle or nerve escapes this prelim- 
inary training and exercise ; and the instinctive 
tendencies which control the play direct the ac- 
tivities into just the performances which the 
animal's later life-habits are going on to require. 

On this view play becomes of the utmost util- 
ity. It is not a by-product, but an essential part 
of the animal's equipment. Just as the infancy 
period has been lengthened in the higher animals 
in order to give the young time to learn all that 
they require to meet the harsh conditions of life, 
so during this infancy period they have in the 
play-instinct a means of the first importance for 
making good use of their time. It is beautiful to 
see the adults playing with their young, adapting 
their strength to the little ones, repeating the 
same exercises without ceasing, drilling them with 
infinite pains to greater hardihood, endurance, 
and skill. 

On this theory it is also easy to see why it is 
that the plays are different for the different spe- 
cies. The actual life conditions are different, and 
the habits of the species are correspondingly dif- 
ferent. So it is only another argument for the 
truth of this theory that we find just those games 



50 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

natural to the young which train them in the 
habits natural to the old. 

This view is now being very generally adopted. 
Many fine illustrations might be cited. A simple 
case may be seen in so small a thing as the habit 
of leaping in play ; the difference, for example, be- 
tween the mountain goat and the comamon fawn. 
The former, when playing on level ground makes 
a very ludicrous exhibition by jumping in little 
up-and-down leaps by which he makes no prog- 
ress. In contrast with this the fawn, whose adult 
life is normally in the plains, takes a long grace- 
ful spring. The difference becomes clear from 
the point of view of this theory, when we remem- 
ber that the goat is to live among the rocks, 
where the only useful jump is just the up-and- 
down sort which the little fellow is now prac- 
tising ; while the deer, in his life upon the plains, 
will always need the running jump. 

Finally, on this theory, play becomes a thing 
for evolution to cultivate for its utility in the 
progress of animal life, and for that reason we 
may suppose it has been perfected in the re- 
markable variety and beauty of form which it 
shows. 

On the psychological side, we find a corre- 
sponding state of things. The mind in the young 
animal or child gets the main education of early 
life through its play situations. Games have an 
extraordinary pedagogical influence. The more 
so because they are the natural and instinctive way 
of getting an education in practical things. This 
again is of supreme utility to the individuals. 

Both for body and mind we find that play illus- 
trates the principle of Organic Selection explained 
above. It makes the young animal flexible, plas- 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 5 I 

tic, and adaptable ; it supplements all his other in- 
stincts and imperfect functions ; it gives him a 
new chance to live, and so determines the course 
of evolution in the direction which the playful 
animal represents. The quasi-social and gregari- 
ous habits of animals probably owe much of their 
strength to the play-impulse, both through the 
training of individual animals and through the 
fixing of these tendencies as instincts in various 
animal species in the way just mentioned. 

In another place below I analyze a child's 
game and draw some inferences from it. Here it 
may suffice to say that in their games the young 
animals acquire the flexibility of mind and muscle 
upon which much of the social co-operation, as 
well as the individual effectiveness, of their later 
life depends. With children, it is not the only 
agency, of course, though its importance is not 
less. We have to carry the children further by 
other means; but the other means should never 
interfere with this natural schooling. They should 
aim the rather by supplementing it wisely to direct 
its operation and to extend its sphere. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE MIND OF THE CHILD CHILD PSYCHOLOGY. 

One of the most interesting chapters of modern 
psychology is that which deals with the child. This 
is also one of the topics of general concern, since 
our common humanity reacts with greater geniality 
upon the little ones, in whom we instinctively see 
innocence and simplicity. The popular interest 



52 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

in children has been, however — as uncharitable as 
it may seem to say it- — of very little service to the 
scientific investigation of childhood. Even to-day, 
when a greater body of valuable results are being 
secured, the main danger to the proper study of 
the child's mind comes from the over-enthusiasm 
and uninstructed assurance of some of its friends. 
Especially is this the case in America, where 
"child study" has become a fad to be pursued 
by parents and teachers who know little about 
the principles of scientific method, and where 
influential educators have enlisted so-called "ob- 
servers" in taking indiscriminate notes on the 
doings of children with no definite problem in 
view, and with no criticism of their procedure. 
It is in place, therefore, to say clearly, at the 
outset, that this chapter does not mean to stimu- 
late parents or unpsychological readers to report 
observations; and further to say also that in the 
mind of the writer the publications made lately 
of large numbers of replies to " syllabi " are for 
the most part worthless, because they heap to- 
gether observations obtained by persons of every 
degree of competence and incompetence. 

On the other hand, the requisites here, as in 
every other sphere of exact observation, are clear 
enough. The student of the child's mind should 
have a thorough knowledge of the principles of 
general psychology, in order to know what is char- 
acteristic of the child when he sees it, and what 
is exceptional ; and he should also have enough 
originality in his ideas and interpretations to 
catch the valuable in the child's doings, distin- 
guishing it from the commonplace, and to plan 
situations and even experiments which will give 
him some control upon those actions of the child 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 53 

which seem to be worth it. The need of these 
qualities is seen in the history of the problems 
of the child's growth which have been taken up 
even by the most competent psychologists. The 
results show a gradual attainment of control 
over the problem in hand, each observer criticis- 
ing the method and results of his predecessor 
until certain rules of observation and experiment 
have been evolved which allow of the repetition 
and repeated observation of the events of the 
child's life. 

As illustrating the sort of problems in which 
there has been this careful and critical work, I 
may instance these: the child's reflex movements, 
the beginnings and growth of sensation, such 
as colour, the rise of discrimination and prefer- 
ence, the origin of right- and left-handedness, 
the rise, mechanism, and meaning of imitation, 
the acquisition of speech and handwriting, the 
growth of the child's sense of personality and 
of his social consciousness, and the laws of phys- 
ical growth, as bearing upon mental develop- 
ment. In all these cases, however, there is again 
a greater and a less exactness. The topics with 
the reports of results which I am going on to give 
may be taken, however, as typical, and as showing 
the direction of complete knowledge rather than 
as having in any one case approached it. 

Before we take up particular questions, how- 
ever, a word may be allowed upon the general 
bearings of the study of the child's mind. I do 
this the more willingly, since it is still true, in 
spite of the hopeful outlook for positive results, 
that it is mainly the willingness of psychology 
to recognise the problems and work at them, 
that makes the topic important at present. To 



54 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

investigate the child by scientific methods is 
really to bring into psychology a procedure 
which has revolutionized the natural sciences ; 
and it is destined to revolutionize the moral 
sciences by making them also in a great meas- 
ure natural sciences. The new and important 
question about the mind which is thus recog- 
nised is this : How did it grow ? What light upon 
its activity and nature can we get from a posi- 
tive knowledge of its early stages and processes 
of growth ? This at once introduces other ques- 
tions : How is the growth of the child related 
to that of the animals ? — how, through heredity 
and social influences, to the growth of the race 
and of the family and society in which he is 
brought up ? All this can be comprehended only 
in the light of the doctrine of evolution, which has 
rejuvenated the sciences of life; and we are now 
beginning to see a rejuvenation of the sciences 
of mind from the same point of view. This is 
what is meant when we hear it said that psy- 
chology is becoming "genetic." 

The advantages to be derived from the study 
of young children from this point of view may be 
briefly indicated. 

I. In the first place, the facts of the infant con- 
sciousness are very simple; that is, they are the 
child's sensations or memories simply, not his 
own observations of them. In the adult mind 
the disturbing influence of self-observation is a 
matter of notorious moment. It is impossible for 
me to report exactly what I feel, for the observa- 
tion of it by my attention alters its character. 
My volition also is a complex thing, involving 
my personal pride and self-consciousness. But 
the child's emotion is as spontaneous as a spring. 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 55 

The effects of it in the mental life come out in 
action, pure and uninfluenced by calculation and 
duplicity and adult reserve. There is around 
every one of us adults a web of convention and 
prejudice of our own making. Not only do we 
reflect the social formalities of our environment, 
and thus lose the distinguishing spontaneities of 
childhood, but each of us builds up his own little 
world of seclusion and formality with himself. 
We are subject, as Bacon said, ncA only to "idols 
of the forum," but also to *' idols of the den." 

The child, on the contrary, has not learned 
his own importance, his pedigree, his beauty, his 
social place, his religion; he has not observed 
himself through all these and countless other 
lenses of time, place, and circumstance. He has 
not yet turned himself into an idol nor the world 
into a temple ; and we can study him apart from 
the complex accretions which are the later de- 
posits of his self-consciousness. 

2. The study of children is often the only 
means of testing the truth of our analyses. If 
we decide that a certain mental state is due to a 
union of simpler elements, then we may appeal to 
the proper period of child life to see the union 
taking place. The range of growth is so enor- 
mous from the infant to the adult, and the begin- 
nings of the child's mental life are so low in the 
scale, in the matter of mental endowment, that 
there is hardly a question of analysis now under 
debate in psychology which may not be tested by 
this method. 

At this point it is that child psychology is 
more valuable than the study of the mind of ani- 
mals. The latter never become men, while chil- 
dren do. The animals represent in some few 
5 



56 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

respects a branch of the tree of growth in ad- 
vance of man, while being in many other respects 
very far behind him. In studying animals we are 
always haunted by the fear that the analogy from 
him to man may not hold ; that some element 
essential to the development of the human mind 
may not be in the animal at all. Even in such a 
question as the localization of the functions of 
the brain described later on, where the analogy 
is one of comparative anatomy and only second- 
arily of psychology, the monkey presents analo- 
gies with man which dogs do not. But in the 
study of children we may be always sure that a 
normal child has in him the promise of a normal 
man. 

3. Again, in the study of the child's mind we 
have the added advantage of a corresponding 
simplicity on the bodily side ; we are able to take 
account of the physiological processes at a time 
when they are relatively simple — that is, before 
the nervous system has grown to maturity. For 
example, psychology used to hold that we have 
a " speech faculty," an inborn mental endowment 
which is incapable of further analysis; but sup- 
port for the position is wanting when we turn to 
the brain of the infant. Not only do we fail to 
find the series of centres now known to be the 
" speech zone," but even those of them which we 
do find have not yet taken up this function, either 
alone or together. In other words, the primary 
object of each of the various centres involved is 
not speech, but some other and simpler function ; 
and speech arises by development from a union of 
these separate functions. 

4. In observing young children, a more direct 
application of experiment is possible. By "ex- 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 57 

periment " here I mean both experiment on the 
senses and also experiment directly on conscious- 
ness by suggestion, social influence, etc. In ex- 
perimenting on adults, great difficulties arise 
through the fact that reactions — such as per- 
forming a voluntary movement when a signal is 
heard, etc. — are complicated by deliberation, habit, 
custom, choice, etc. The subject hears a sound, 
identifies it, and presses a button — if he choose 
and agree to do so. What goes on in this inter- 
val between the advent of the incoming nerve 
process and the discharge of the outgoing nerve 
process ? Something, at any rate, which repre- 
sents a brain process of great complexity. Now, 
anything that fixes or simplifies the brain process, 
in so far gives greater certainty to the results. 
For this reason experiments on reflex actions are 
valuable and decisive where similar experiments 
on voluntary actions are uncertain and of doubt- 
ful value. Now the child's mind is relatively sim- 
ple, and so offers a field for more fruitful experi- 
ment ; this is seen in the reactions of the infant 
to strong stimuli, such as bright colours, etc., as 
related further on. 

With this inadequate review of the advantages 
of infant psychology, it is well also to point out 
the dangers of the abuse of it. Such dangers are 
real. The very simplicity which seems to char- 
acterize the life of the child is often extremely 
misleading, and this because the simplicity in 
question is sometimes ambiguous. Two actions 
of the child may appear equally simple; but one 
may be an adaptive action, learned with great 
pains and really very complex, while the other 
may be inadaptive and really simple. Children 



58 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

differ under the law of heredity very remarkably, 
even in the simplest manifestations of "their con- 
scious lives. It is never safe to say without quali- 
fication : " This child did, consequently all chil- 
dren must," The most we can usually say in 
observing single children is: "This child did, 
consequently another child may." 

Speaking more positively, the following re- 
marks may be useful to those who have a mind 
to observe children: 

1. In the first place, we can fix no absolute 
time in the history of the child at which a certain 
mental process takes its rise. The observations, 
now quite extensively recorded, and sometimes 
quoted as showing that the first year, or the 
second year, etc., brings such and such develop- 
ments, tend, on the contrary, to show that such 
divisions do not hold in any strict sense. Like 
any other organic growth, the nervous system 
may develop faster under more favourable con- 
ditions, or more slowly under less favourable; 
and the growth of the mind is largely dependent 
upon the growth of the brain. Only in broad 
outline and within very wide limits can such 
periods be marked off at all. 

2. The possibility of the occurrence of a men- 
tal state at a particular time must be distinguished 
from its necessity. The occurrence of a single 
clearly observed fact is decisive only against the 
theory according to which its occurrence under 
the given conditions may not occur. For exam- 
ple, the very early adaptive movements of the 
infant in receiving its food can not be due to in- 
telligence and will ; but the case is still open as 
to the question what is the reason of their pres- 
ence — i. e., how much nervous development is 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 59 

present, how much experience is necessary, etc. 
It is well to emphasize the fact that one case may 
be decisive in overthrowing a theory, but the con- 
ditions are seldom simple enough to make one 
case decisive in establishing a theory. 

3. It follows, however, from the principle of 
growth itself that the order of development of 
the main mental functions is constant, and nor- 
mally free from great variations ; consequently, 
the most fruitful observations of children are 
those which show that such an act was present 
before another. The complexity becomes finally 
so remarkable that there seems to be no before 
or after at all in mental things; but if the child's 
growth shows a stage in which any process is 
clearly absent, we have at once light upon the 
laws of growth. For instance : if a single case 
is conclusively established of a child's drawing 
an inference before it begins to use words or 
significant vocal sounds, the one case is as good 
as a thousand to show that thought may develop 
in some degree independently of spoken lan- 
guage. 

4. While the most direct results are acquired 
by systematic experiments with a given point in 
view, still general observations carefully record- 
ed by competent persons, are important for the 
interpretation which a great many such records 
may afford in the end. In the multitude of ex- 
periences here, as everywhere, there is strength. 
Such observations should cover everything about 
the child — his movements, cries, impulses, sleep, 
dreams, personal preferences, muscular efforts, at- 
tempts at expression, games, favourites, etc. — 
and should be recorded in a regular daybook at 
the time of occurrence. What is important and 



6o THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

what is not, is, as I have said, something to be 
learned; and it is extremely desirable that any- 
one contemplating such observations should ac- 
quaint himself beforehand with the principles of 
general psychology and physiology, and should 
seek also the practical advice of a trained ob- 
server. 

As yet many of the observations which we 
have in this field were made by the average 
mother, who knows less about the human body 
than she does about the moon or the wild flow- 
ers, or by the average father, who sees his child 
for an hour a day, when the boy is dressed up, 
and who has never slept in the same room with 
him — let alone the same bed ! — ^in his life ; by 
people who have never heard the distinction be- 
tween reflex and voluntary action, or that between 
nervous adaptation and conscious choice. The 
difference between the average mother and the 
good psychologist is this : she has no theories, he 
has; he has no interests, she has. She may bring 
up a family of a dozen and not be able to make a 
single trustworthy observation ; he may be able, 
from one sound of one yearling, to confirm theo- 
ries of the neurologist and educator, which are 
momentous for the future training and welfare of 
the child. 

As for experimenting with children, only the 
psychologist should undertake it. The connec- 
tions between the body and the mind are so close 
in infancy, the mere animal can do so much to 
ape reason, and the child is so helpless under the 
leading of instinct, impulse, and external neces- 
sity, that the task is excessively difficult — to say 
nothing of the extreme delicacy and tenderness 
of the budding tendrils of the mind. But others 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 6 1 

do experiment ! Every time we send a child out 
of the home to the school, we subject him to ex- 
periment of the most serious and alarming kind. 
He goes into the hands of a teacher who is often 
not only not wise unto the child's salvation, but 
who is, perchance, a machine for administering a 
single experiment to an infinite variety of chil- 
dren. It is perfectly certain that a great many 
of our children are irretrievably damaged or hin- 
dered in their mental and moral development in 
the school ; but we can not be at all sure that 
they would fare any better if they were taught 
at home ! The children are experimented with so 
much and so unwisely, in any case, that possibly 
a little intentional experiment, guided by real in- 
sight and psychological information, would do 
them good. 

Methods of experimenting with Children. — In 
endeavouring to bring such questions as the 
degree of memory, recognition, association, etc., 
present in an infant, to a practical test, consider- 
able embarrassment has always been experienced 
in understanding the child's vocal and other re- 
sponses. Of course, the only way a child's mind 
can be studied is through its expressions, facial, 
lingual, vocal, muscular; and the first question — 
i. e.. What did the infant do ? must be followed 
by a second — i. e., What did his doing that mean ? 
The second question is, as I have said, the 
harder question, and the one which requires more 
knowledge and insight. It is evident, on the sur- 
face, that the further away we get in the child's 
life from simple inherited or reflex responses, 
the more complicated do the processes become, 
and the greater becomes the difficulty of an- 
alyzing them, and arriving at a true picture of 



62 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

the real mental condition which lies back of 
them. 

To illustrate this confusion, I may cite one of 
the few problems which psychologists have at- 
tempted to solve by experiments on children : 
the determination of the order of rise of the 
child's perceptions of the different colours. The 
first series of experiments consisted in showing 
the child various colours and requiring him to 
name them, the results being expressed in per- 
centages of correct answers to the whole number. 
Now this experiment involves no less than four 
different questions, and the results give abso- 
lutely no clew to their separation. It involves: 
I. The child's distinguishing different colours dis- 
played simultaneously before it, together with the 
complete development of the eyes for colour sen- 
sation. 2. The child's ability to recognise or iden- 
tify a colour after having seen it once. 3. An as- 
sociation between the child's colour seeing and 
word hearing and speaking memories, by which 
the proper name for the colours is brought up in 
his mind. 4. Equally ready facility in the pro- 
nunciation of the various names of the colours 
which he recognises; and there is the further em- 
barrassment, that any such process which involves 
association of ideas, is as varied as the lives of 
children. The single fact that speech is acquired 
long after objects and some colours are distin- 
guished, shows that results reached by this method 
have very little value as far as the problem of the 
first perception of colours is concerned. 

That the fourth element pointed out above is 
a real source of confusion is shown by the fact 
that children recognise many words which they 
can not readily pronounce. When this was real- 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 63 

ized, a second phase in the development of the 
problem arose. A colour was named, and then 
the child was required to pick out that colour. 
This gave results different from those reached by 
the first method, blue and red leading the list in 
correct answers by the first method, while by this 
second method yellow led, and blue came near 
the end of the list. 

The further objection that colours might be 
distinguished before the word names are learned, 
or that colour words might be interchanged or 
confused by the child, gave rise to what we may 
call the third stage in the statement of the prob- 
lem. The method of " recognition " took the 
place of the method of "naming." This con- 
sisted in showing to a child a coloured disk, with- 
out naming it, and then asking him to pick out 
the same colour from a number of coloured 
disks. 

- This reduces the question to the second of the 
four I have named above. It is the usual method 
of testing for colour blindness, in which, from 
defects of vision, certain colours can not be per- 
ceived at all. It answers very well for colour 
blindness ; for what we really want to learn in 
the case of a sailor or a signal-man is whether he 
can recognise a given signal when it is repeated ; 
that is, does he know green or red to be the same 
as his former experience of green or red ? But it 
is evident that there is still a more fundamental 
question in the matter — the real question of col- 
our perception. It is quite possible that a child 
might not recognise an isolated colour when he 
could really very well distinguish the colours 
lying side by side. The last question, then, is 
this: When does the child get the different col- 



64 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

our Sensations (not recognitions), and in what 
order ? 

To solve this question it would seem that ex- 
periments should be made upon younger children. 
The results described above were all secured 
after the children had made considerable prog- 
ress in learning to speak. 

To meet this requirement another method 
may be used which can be applied to children 
less than a year old. The colours are shown, and 
the child led to grasp after them. This method 
is of such a character as to yield a series of ex- 
periments whose results are in terms of the most 
fundamental movements of the infant; it can be 
easily and pleasantly conducted ; and it is of wide 
application. The child's hand movements are 
nearly ideal in this respect. The hand reflects 
the child's first feelings, and becomes the most 
mobile organ of his volition, except his organs 
of speech. We find spontaneous arm and hand 
movements, reflex movements, reaching^out move- 
ments, grasping movements, imitative movements, 
manipulating movements, and voluntary efforts — 
all these, in order, reflecting the development of 
the mind. 

To illustrate this method, I may cite certain 
results reached by myself on the questions of col- 
our and distance perception, and right-handedness 
in the child. 

Distance and Colour Perception. — I undertook 
at the beginning of my child H.'s ninth month to 
experiment with her with a view to arriving at 
the exact state of her colour perception, and also 
to investigate her sense of distance. The arrange- 
ments consisted in this instance in giving the in- 
fant a comfortable sitting posture, kept constant 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 65 

by a band passing around her chest and fastened 
securely to the back of her chair. Her arms 
were left bare and quite free in their movements. 
Pieces of paper of different colours were exposed 
before her, at varying distances, front, right, and 
left. This was regulated by a framework, con- 
sisting of a horizontal rod graded in inches, pro- 
jecting from the back of the chair at a level with 
her shoulder and parallel with her arm when ex- 
tended straight forward, and carrying on it an- 
other rod, also graded in inches, at right angles 
to the first. This second rod was thus a horizon- 
tal line directly in front of the child, parallel with 
a line connecting her shoulders, and so equally 
distant for both hands. This second rod was 
made to slide upon the first, so as to be adjusted 
at any desired distance from the child. On this 
second rod the colours, etc., were placed in suc- 
cession, the object being to excite the child to 
reach for them. So far from being distasteful 
to the infant, I found that, with pleasant sugges- 
tions thrown about the experiments, the whole 
procedure gave her much gratification, and the 
affair became one of her pleasant daily occupa- 
tions. After each sitting she was given a reward 
of some kind. I give the results, both for colour 
and distance, of 217 experiments. Of these iii 
were with five colours and 106 with ordinary news- 
paper (chosen as a relatively neutral object, which 
would have no colour value and no association, 
to the infant). 

Colour. — The colours range themselves in the 
order of attractiveness — blue, red, white, green, 
and brown. Disregarding white, the difference 
between blue and red is very slight, compared 
with that between any other two. This confirms 



66 THE STORY OF THE MIx\D. 

the results of the second method described above. 
Brown, to my child — as tested in this way — seemed 
to be about as neutral as could well be. A simi- 
lar distaste for brown has been noticed by others. 
White, on the other hand, was more attractive 
than green. I am sorry that my list did not in- 
clude yellow. The newspaper was, at reaching 
distance (9 to 10 inches) and a little more (up to 
14 inches), as attractive as the average of the 
colours, and even as much so as the red ; but 
this is probably due to the fact that the newspa- 
per experiments came after a good deal of prac- 
tice in reaching after colours, and a more exact 
association between the stimulus and its distance. 
At 15 inches and over, the newspaper was refused 
in 93 per cent of the cases, while blue was re- 
fused at that distance in only 75 per cent, and 
red in S;^ per cent. 

Distance. — In regard to the question of dis- 
tance, the child persistently refused to reach for 
anything put 16 inches or more away from her. 
At 15 inches she refused 91 per cent of all the 
cases, 90 per cent of the colour cases, and, as I 
have said, 93 per cent of the newspaper cases. 
At nearer distances we find the remarkable uni- 
formity with which the safe-distance association 
works at this early age. At 14 inches only 14 
per cent of all the cases were refused, and at 13 
inches only about 7 per cent. There was a larger 
percentage of refusals at 11 and 12 inches than 
at 13 and 14 inches, a result due to the influence 
of the brown, which was refused consistently 
when more than 10 inches away. The fact that 
there were no refusals to reach for anything ex- 
posed within reaching distance (10 inches) — other 
attractive objects being kept away — shows two 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 67 

things: (i) the very fine estimation visually of 
the distance represented by the arm-length ; and 
(2) the great uniformity at this age of the 
phenomenon of Motor Suggestion upon which 
this method of child study is based, and which 
is referred to again below. In respect to the 
first point, it will be remembered that the child 
does not begin to reach for anything that it 
sees until about the fourth or sixth week ; so 
it is evident at what a remarkably fast rate 
those obscure factors of size, perspective, light 
and shade, etc., which signify distance to the 
eye, become associated with arm movements of 
reaching. This method, applied with proper pre- 
cautions, obviates many of the difficulties of the 
others. There are certain requirements of proper 
procedure, however, which should never be neg- 
lected by any one who experiments with young 
children. 

In the first place, the child is peculiarly 
susceptible to the appeals of change, novelty, 
chance, or happy suggestion ; and often the fail- 
ure to respond to a stimulus is due to distraction 
or to discomfort rather than to lack of intrinsic 
interest. Again, fatigue is a matter of consider- 
able importance. In respect to fatigue, 1 should 
say that the first signs of restlessness, or arbi- 
trary loss of interest, in a series of stimulations, 
is sufficient warning, and all attempts at further 
experimenting should cease. Often the child is 
in a state of indisposition, of trifling nervous irri- 
tability, etc. ; this should be detected beforehand, 
and then nothing should be undertaken. No se- 
ries longer than three trials should be attempted 
without changing the child's position, resting its 
attention with a song, or a game, etc., and thus 



6S THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

leading it fresh to its task again. Furthermore, 
no single stimulus, as a colour, should be twice 
repeated without a change to some other, since 
the child's eagerness or alertness is somewhat 
satisfied by the first effort, and a new thing is 
necessary to bring him out to full exercise again. 
After each effort or two the child should be given 
the object reached for to hold or play with for a 
moment; otherwise he grows to apprehend that 
the whole affair is a case of "Tantalus." In all 
these matters very much depends upon the 
knowledge and care of the experimenter, and his 
ability to keep the child in a normal condition of 
pleasurable muscular exercise throughout. 

In performing colour experiments, several re- 
quirements would appear to be necessary for ex- 
act results. Should not the colours chosen be 
equal in purity, intensity, lustre, illumination, 
etc. ? In reference to these differences, I think 
only that degree of care need be exercised which 
good comparative judgment provides. Colours 
of about equal objective intensity, of no gloss, of 
relatively evident spectral purity, under constant 
illumination — this is all that is required. The 
variations due to the grosser factors I have men- 
tioned — such as condition of attention, physical 
unrest, disturbing noises, sights, etc. — are of 
greater influence than any of these more recon- 
dite variations in the stimulus. Intensity and 
lustre, however, are certainly important. It is 
possible, by carefully choosing a room of pretty 
constant daylight illumination, and setting the 
experiments at the same hour each day, to se- 
cure a regular degree of brightness if the colours 
themselves are equally bright; and lustre may be 
ruled out by using coloured wools or blotting- 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 69 

papers. The papers used in the experiments 
given above were coloured blotting-papers. The 
omission of yellow is due to the absence, in the 
neighbourhood, of a satisfactory yellow paper. 

The method now described may be further 
illustrated by the following experiments on the 
use of the hands by the young child. 

The Origifi of Right-handedness. — The question, 
"Why are we right- or left-handed ?" has exer- 
cised the speculative ingenuity of many men. It 
has come to the front anew in. recent years, in 
view of the advances made in the general physi- 
ology of the nervous system ; and certainly we 
are now in a better position to set the problem 
intelligently and to hope for its solution. Hith- 
erto the actual conditions of the rise of " dex- 
trality " in young children — as the general fact of 
uneven-handedness may be called — have not 
been closely observed. It was to gain light, 
therefore, upon the facts themselves that the ex- 
periments described in the following pages were 
carried out. 

My child H. was placed in a comfortable sit- 
ting posture, the arms left bare and free in their 
movement, and allowed to reach for objects 
placed before her in positions exactly determined 
and recorded by the simple arrangement of 
sliding rods already described. The experiments 
took place at the same hour daily, for a period 
extending from her fourth to her tenth month. 
These experiments were planned with very great 
care and with especial view to the testing of sev- 
eral hypotheses which, although superficial to 
those who have studied physiology, yet constant- 
ly recur in publications on this subject. Among 
these theories certain may be mentioned with re- 



70 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

gard to which my experiments were conclusive. 
It has frequently been held that a child's right- 
handedness arises from the nurse's or mother's 
constant method of carrying it, the child's hand 
which is left free being more exercised, and so 
becoming stronger. This theory is ambiguous as 
regards both mother and child. The mother, if 
right-handed, would carry the child on the left 
arm, in order to work with the right arm. This I 
find an invariable tendency with myself and with 
nurses and mothers whom I have observed. But 
this would leave the child's left arm free, and so 
a right-handed mother would be found with a 
left-handed child ! Again, if the mother or nurse 
be left-handed, the child would tend to be right- 
handed. Or if, as is the case in civilized coun- 
tries, nurses largely replace the mothers, it would 
be necessary that most of the nurses be left- 
handed in order to make most of the children 
right-handed. Now, none of these deductions 
are true. Further, the child, as a matter of fact, 
holds on with both hands, however it is itself held. 
Another theory maintains that the develop- 
ment of right-handedness is due to differences in 
weight of the two lateral halves of the body ; 
this tends to bring more strain on one side than 
the other, and to give more exercise, and so more 
development, to that side. This evidently as- 
sumes that children are not right- or left-handed 
before they learn to stand. This my results given 
below show to be false. Again, we are told that 
infants get right-handed by being placed on one 
side too much for sleep ; this can be shown to 
have little force also when the precaution is taken 
to place the child alternately on its right and left 
sides for its sleeping periods. 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 7 1 

In the case of the child H., certain precau- 
tions were carefully enforced. She was never 
carried about in arms at all, never walked with 
when crying or sleepless ; she was frequently 
turned over in her sleep ; she was not allowed 
to balance herself on her feet until a later period 
than that covered by the experiments. Thus the 
conditions of the rise of the right-handed era 
were made as simple and uniform as possible. 

The experiments included, besides reaching 
for colours, a great many of reaching for other ob- 
jects, at longer and shorter distances, and in unsym- 
metrical directions. I give some details of the 
results of the experiments in which simple ob- 
jects were used, extending over a period of four 
months, from the fifth to the ninth in her life. 
The number of experiments at each sitting varied 
from ten to forty, the position of the child being 
reversed as to light from windows, position of 
observation, etc., after half of each series. 

No trace of preference for either hand was 
discernible during this period ; indeed, the neu- 
trality was as complete as if it had been arranged 
beforehand, or had followed the throwing of 
dice. 

I then conceived the idea that possibly a se- 
verer distance test might affect the result and 
show a marked preferential response by one hand 
over the other. I accordingly continued to use 
a neutral stimulus, but placed it from twelve to 
fifteen inches away from the child. This resulted 
in very hard straining on her part, with all the 
signs of physical effort (explosive breathing sounds 
resulting from the setting of the larynx, rush of 
blood to the head, seen in the flushing of the 
face, etc.). The number of experiments in each 
6 



72 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

series was intentionally made very small, from one 
to twelve, in order to avoid fatigue. 

The results were now very interesting. During 
the month ending June 15th the child showed 
no decided preference for either hand in reach- 
ing straight before her within the easy reaching 
distance of ten inches, but a slight balance in 
favour of the left hand; yet she was right-handed 
to a marked degree during the same period as 
regards movements which required effort or strain, 
such as grasping for objects twelve to fifteen 
inches distant. P'or the greater distances, the 
left hand was used in only five cases as against 
seventy-four cases of the use of tne right hand; 
and further, all these five cases were twelve-inch 
distances, the left hand being used absolutely not 
at all in the forty-five cases at longer distances. 

In order to test this further, I varied the point 
of exposure of the stimulus to the right or left, 
aiming thus to attract the hand on one side or 
the other, and so to determine whether the growth 
or such a preference was limited to experiences 
of convenience in reaching to adjacent local ob- 
jects, etc. 

The deviation to the left in front of the body 
only called out the right hand to greater exertion, 
while the left hand fell into still greater disuse. 
This seems to show that " dextrality " is not de- 
rived from the experience of the individual in 
using either hand predominantly for reaching, 
grasping, holding, etc., within the easiest range 
of that hand. The right hand intruded regularly 
upon the domain of the left. 

Proceeding upon the clew thus obtained, a 
clew which seems to suggest that the hand prefer- 
ence is influenced by the stimulus to the eye, I 



THE MIND OF THE CHH.D. 73 

introduced hand observations into a series of ex- 
periments already mentioned above on the same 
child's perception of the different colours; think- 
ing that the colour stimulus which represented 
the strongest inducement to the child to reach 
might have the same effect in determining the 
use of the right hand as the increased distance 
in the experiments already described. This in- 
ference is proved to be correct by the results. 

It should be added that in all cases in which 
both hands were used together, each hand was 
called out with evident independence of the 
other, both about the same time, and both carried 
energetically to the goal. In many other cases 
in which either right or left hand is given in the 
results, the other hand also moved, but in a sub- 
ordinate and aimless way. There was a very 
marked difference between the use of both hands 
in some cases, and of one hand followed by, or ac- 
companied by, the other in other cases. It was 
very rare that the second hand did not thus fol- 
low or accompany the first; and this was ex- 
tremely marked in the violent reaching for which 
the right hand was mainly used. This movement 
was almost invariably accompanied by an object- 
less and fruitless symmetrical movement of the 
other hand. 

The results of the entire series of experi- 
ments on the use of the hands may be stated as 
follows, mainly in the words in which they were 
summarily reported some time ago : 

I. I found no continued preference for either 
hand as long as there were no violent muscular 
exertions made (based on 2,187 systematic experi- 
ments in cases of free movement of hands near 
the body — i. e., right hand, 577 cases; left hand, 



74 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

568 cases — a difference of 9 cases; both hands, 
1,042 cases; the difference of 9 cases being too 
shght to have any meaning) ; the period covered 
being from the child's sixth to her tenth month 
inclusive. 

2. Under the same conditions, the tendency to 
use both hands together was about double the 
tendency to use either (seen from the number of 
cases of the use of both hands in the figures given 
above). 

3. A distinct preference for the right hand in 
violent efforts in reaching became noticeable in 
the seventh and eighth months. Experiments 
during the eighth month on this cue gave, in 80 
cases, right hand, 74 cases; left hand, 5 cases; 
both hands, i case. This was true in two very 
distinct classes of cases : first, reaching for ob- 
jects, neutral as regards colour (newspaper, etc.), 
at more than the reaching distance; and, second, 
reaching for bright colours at any distance. 
Under the stimulus of bright colours, from 86 
cases, 84 were right-hand cases and 2 left-hand. 
Right-handedness had accordingly developed un- 
der pressure of muscular effort in the sixth and 
seventh months, and showed itself also under the 
influence of a strong colour stimulus to the eye. 

4. Up to this time the child had not learned 
to stand or to creep;, hence the development of 
one hand more than the other is not due to dif- 
ferences in weight between the two longitudinal 
halves of the body. As she had not learned to 
speak or to utter articulate -sounds with much dis- 
tinctness, we may say also that right- or left- 
handedness may develop while the speech centres 
are not yet functioning. Further, the right hand 
is carried over after objects on the left side. 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 75 

showing that habit in reaching does not deter- 
mine its use. 

Theoretical. — Some interesting points arise in 
connection with the interpretation of these facts. 
If it be true that the order of rise of mental and 
physiological functions is constant, then for this 
question the results obtained in the case of one 
child, if accurate, would hold for others apart 
from any absolute time determination. We should 
expect, therefore, that these results would be 
confirmed by experiments on other children, and 
this is the only way their correctness can be 
tested. 

If, when tested, they should be found correct, 
they would be sufficient answer to several of 
the theories of right-handedness heretofore urged, 
as has been already remarked. The rise of the 
phenomenon must be sought, therefore, in more 
deep-going facts of physiology than such theories 
supply. Furthermore, if we go lower in the ani- 
mal scale than man, analogies for the kinds of 
experience which are urged as reasons for right- 
handedness are not present ; animals do not carry 
their young, nor pat them to sleep, nor do animals 
shake hands ! 

A full discussion would lead us to the conclu- 
sion that dextrality is due to a difference in de- 
velopment in the two hemispheres of the brain, 
that these differences are hereditary, and that they 
show themselves toward the end of the first year. 

It is a singular circumstance that right-handed- 
ness and speech are controlled by the same hemi- 
sphere of the brain and from contiguous areas. 
It would explain this — and at the same time it 
seems probable from other considerations — if we 
found that right-handedness was first used for ex- 



76 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

pression before speech ; and that speech has arisen 
from the setting aside, for further development, 
of the area in the brain first used for righthand- 
edness. Musical expression has its seat in or near 
the same lobe of the brain. 

The Child's Mental Developmefit in General. — 
The actual development of the child, as observa- 
tions from many sources indicate it, may be 
sketched very briefly in its main outlines. It is 
probable that the earliest consciousness is simply 
a mass of touch and muscular sensations experi- 
enced in part before birth. Shortly after birth the 
child begins to connect his impressions with one 
another and to show Memory. But both mem- 
ory and Association are very weak, and depend 
upon intense stimulations, such as bright lights, 
loud noises, etc. The things which most effect him 
at these early stages are those which bring him into 
conditions of sharp physical pain or give him acute 
pleasure. Yet it is a remarkable fact that at birth 
the pain reflex is wanting. His whole life up to 
about the fourth month turns upon his organic 
and vegetative needs. At three months the young 
child will forget his mother or nurse after a very 
few days. Attention begins to arise about the 
end of the first quarter year, appearing first in 
response to bright lights and loud sounds, and 
being for a considerable time purely reflex, drawn 
here and there by the successive impressions 
which the environment makes. With lights and 
sounds, however, movements also attract the in- 
fant's attention very early ; and the passage from 
reflex attention to a sort of vague interest seems to 
arise first in connection with the movements of 
the persons about him. This interest goes on to 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 77 

develop very rapidly in the second half year, in 
connection more particularly with the movements 
which are associated with the child's own comfort 
and discomfort. The association of muscular 
sensations with those of touch and sight serves to 
give him his first clear indications of the positions 
of his own members and of other objects. His 
discrimination of what belongs to his own body is 
probably aided by so-called " double touch " — the 
fact that when he touches his own body, as in 
touching his foot with the hand, he has two sensa- 
tions, one in the foot and the other in the hand. 
This is not the case when he touches other objects, 
and he soon learns the distinction, getting the 
outlines of his own body marked out in a vague 
way. The learning of the localities on his body 
which he can not see, however, lags far behind. 
The movements of his limbs in active exploration, 
accompanied by sight, enables him to build up his 
knowledge of the world about him. Learning this 
he soon falls to "experimenting" with the things 
of space. Thus he begins to find out how things 
fit together, and what their uses are. 

On the side of his movements we find him go- 
ing through a series of remarkable adaptations to 
his environment. At the beginning his move- 
ments are largely random discharges, or reflexes 
of an instinctive character, such as sucking. Yet 
in the first month he shows the beginning of 
adaptation to the suggestions of his daily life, the 
first manifestations of acquired Habit. He learns 
when and how long he is expected to sleep, when 
and how much to eat; he very soon finds out the 
peculiar touch and vocal tones of this person or 
that, and acts upon these distinctions. He gets 
to know the meaning of his food bottle, to under- 



78 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

Stand the routine movements of persons about 
the room, and the results of violations of their 
order. His hat, wraps, carriage, become in the 
first half year signals to him of the outdoor 
excursion. He no longer bobs his head about 
when held erect, and begins to control his natural 
processes. The remarkable thing about all these 
adaptations is that they occur before the infant 
can in any sense be said to have a Will ; for, as 
has been said, the fibres of the brain necessary 
to voluntary action — in the cortex of the hemi- 
spheres — are not yet formed. 

The realization of this extraordinary adaptive- 
ness of the very young child should save parents 
many an anxious day and sleepless night. There 
is practically nothing more easy than to impress 
upon the child whatever .habits of daily — and 
nightly ! — routine one wishes to give him, if he be 
taken early enough. The only requirements are 
knowledge of what is good for him, and then 
inviolable regularity in everything that concerns 
him. Under this treatment he will become as 
"obstinate" in being "good" as the opposite 
so-called indulgent or capricious treatment always 
make him in being "bad." There is no reason 
whatever that he should be walked with or held, 
that he should be taken up when he cries, that he 
should be trotted when he awakes, or that he 
should have a light by night. Things like this 
are simply bad habits for which the parents have 
themselves to thank. The child adapts himself 
to his treatment, and it is his treatment that his 
habits reflect. 

During the second half-year — sooner or later 
in particular cases — the child is ready to begin to 
imitate. Imitation is henceforth, for the follow- 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 79 

ing few years, the most characteristic thing about 
his action. He first imitates movements, later 
sounds, especially vocal sounds. His imitations 
themselves also show progress, being at first what 
is called " simple imitation " (repeating a distinc- 
tion already spoken of in the chapter on ani- 
mals), as when the child lies in bed in the morn- 
ing and repeats the same sound over and over 
again. He hears his own voice and imitates it. 
In this sort of imitation he simply allows his in- 
stinct to reproduce what he hears without con- 
trol or interference from him. He does not im- 
prove, but goes on making the same sounds with 
the same mistakes again and again. But a little 
later he begins what is called " persistent imita- 
tion " — the " try-try-again," already spoken of — 
which is a very different thing. Persistent imi- 
tation shows unmistakably the presence of will. 
The child is not satisfied with simple imitation or 
mere repetition, whether it be good or bad in its 
results. He now sees his errors and aims con- 
sciously to improve. Note the child's struggles 
to speak a word right by imitation of the pronun- 
ciation of others. And he succeeds. He gradu- 
ally gets his muscles under control by persistence 
in his try-try-again. 

Then he goes further — about the beginning of 
his second year, usually. He gets the idea that 
imitation is the way to learn, and turns all his 
effort into imitations experimentally carried out. 
He is now ready to learn most of the great pro- 
cesses of his later culture. Speech, writing, 
this special accomplishment and that, are all 
learned by experimental imitation. 

The example of the child's trying to draw or 
write has already been cited. He looks at the 



8o THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

copy before him; sets all his muscles of hand and 
arm into massive contraction ; turns and twists his 
tongue, bends his body, winds his legs together, 
holds his breath, and in every way concentrates 
his energies upon the copying of the model. In all 
this he is experimenting. 

He produces a wealth of movements, from 
which, very gradually, as he tries and tries again, 
the proper ones are selected out. These he 
practises, and lets the superfluous ones fall away, 
until he secures the requisite control over hand 
and arm. Or suppose a child endeavouring, in the 
crudest fashion, to put a rubber on the end of a 
pencil, after seeing some one else do it — just the 
sort of thing a year-old child loves to imitate. 
What a chaos of ineffective movements ! But with 
repeated effort he gets nearer and nearer to it, 
and finally succeeds. 

On the side of action, two general principles 
have been formulated in child psychology, both 
illustrated in the cases and experiments now 
given: The one, Motor Suggestion, is, as we saw, 
a principle of general psychology. Its impor- 
tance to the child is that by it he forms Habits, 
useful responses to his environment, and so saves 
himself many sad blunders. The other principle 
is that of Imitation ; by it the child learns new 
things directly in the teeth of his habits. By exer- 
cising in an excessive way what he has already 
learned through his experimental imitations, he is 
continually modifying his habits and making new 
adaptations. These two principles dominate the 
active life of the adult man as well. 

Personality Suggestio7i. — A further set of facts 
may be cited to illustrate the working of Sug- 
gestion, now in the sphere of the receptive life. 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 8 1 

They are important as showing the child's progress 
in learning the great features of personality. 

One of the most remarkable tendencies of the 
very young child in its responses to its environ- 
ment is the tendency to recognise differences of 
personality. It responds to what have been called 
Suggestions of Personality. As early as the sec- 
ond month it distinguishes its mother's or nurse's 
touch in the dark. It learns characteristic meth- 
ods of holding, taking up, patting, kissing, etc., 
and adapts itself, by a marvellous accuracy of pro- 
testation or acquiescence, to these personal varia- 
tions. Its associations of personality come to be 
of such importance that for a long time its happi- 
ness or misery depends upon the presence of cer- 
tain kinds of " personality suggestion." It is quite 
a different thing from the child's behavior toward 
things which are not persons. Things come to 
be, with some few exceptions which are involved 
in the direct gratification of appetite, more and 
more unimportant ; things may be subordinated to 
regular treatment or reaction. But persons be- 
come constantly more important, as uncertain 
and dominating agents of pleasure and pain. The 
sight of movement by persons, with its effects on 
the infant, seems to be the most important factor 
in this peculiar influence ; later the voice comes to 
stand for a person's presence, and at last the face 
and its expressions equal the person in all his 
attributes. 

I think this distinction between persons and 
things, between agencies and objects, is the child's 
very first step toward a sense of personality. The 
sense of uncertainty or lack of confidence grows 
stronger and stronger in his dealings with per- 
sons — an uncertainty aroused by the moods, emo- 



82 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

tions, changes of expression, and shades of treat- 
ment of the persons around it. A person stands 
for a group of quite unstable experiences. This 
period we may, for brevity of expression, assuming 
it to be first in order of development, call the 
"projective" stage in the growth of the child's 
personal consciousness. 

It is from this beginning that the child goes 
on to become fully conscious of what persons are. 
And when we observe his actions more closely we 
find no less than four steps in his growth, which, 
on account of the importance of the topic, may 
be stated in some little detail. 

I. The first thing of significance to him, as has 
been said, is movement. The first attempts of 
the infant at anything like steady attention are 
directed to moving things — a swaying curtain, a 
moving light, a stroking touch, etc. And further 
than this, the moving things soon become more 
than objects of curiosity ; these things are just 
the things that affect him with pleasure or pain. 
It is movement that brings him his bottle, move- 
ment that regulates the stages of his bath, move- 
ment that dresses him comfortably, movement 
that sings to him and rocks him to sleep. In that 
complex of sensations, the nurse, the feature of 
importance to him, of immediate satisfaction or 
redemption from pain, is this — movements come 
to succour him. Change in his bodily feeling is 
the vital requirement of his life, for by it the 
rhythm of his vegetative existence is secured; 
and these things are accompanied and secured 
always in the moving presence of the one he sees 
and feels about him. This, I take it, is the earli- 
est reflection in his consciousness of the world of 
personalities about him. At this stage his ''per- 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 83 

sonality suggestion" is a pain-movement-pleasure 
state of mind ; to this he reacts with a smile, and 
a crow, and a kick. Undoubtedly this association 
gets some of its value from the other similar one 
in which the movements are the infant's own. It 
is by movements that he gets rid of pains and 
secures pleasures. , ^ 

Many facts tend to bear out this position. 
My child cried in the dark when I handled her, 
although I imitated the nurse's movements as 
closely as possible. She tolerated a strange pres- 
ence so long as it remained quietly in its place; 
but let it move, and especially let it usurp any of 
the pieces of movement-business of the nurse or 
mother, and her protests were emphatic. The 
movements tended to bring the strange elements 
of a new face into the vital association, pain- 
movement-pleasure, and so to disturb its familiar 
course; this constituted it a strange ''person- 
ality." 

It is astonishing, also, what new accidental 
elements may become parts of this association. 
Part of a movement, a gesture, a peculiar habit 
of the nurse, may become sufficient to give as- 
surance of the welcome presence and the pleas- 
ures which the presence brings. Two notes of 
my song in the night stood for my presence 
to H., and no song from any one else could re- 
place it. A lighted match stopped the crying 
of E. for food in her fourteenth week, although 
it was but a signal for a process of food prepara- 
tion lasting several minutes; and a simple light 
never stopped her crying under any other circum- 
stances. 

2. With this first start in the sense of person- 
ality we find also the beginning of the recognition 



84 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

of different personalities. It is evident that the 
sense of another's presence thus felt in the infant's 
consciousness rests, as all associations rest, upon 
regularity or repetition ; his sense of expectancy 
is aroused whenever the chain of events is started. 
This is soon embodied largely in two indications: 
the face and the voice. But it is easy to see that 
this is a very meagre sense of personality; a 
moving machine which brought pain and allevi- 
ated suffering might serve as well. So the child 
begins to learn, in addition, the fact that persons 
are in a measure individual in their treatment of 
him; that their individuality has elements of un- 
certainty or ij'i^egularity about it. This growing 
sense is very clear to one who watches an infant in 
its second half year. Sometimes its mother gives it 
a biscuit, but sometimes she does not. Sometimes 
the father smiles and tosses the child ; sometimes 
he does not. Even the indulgence of the grand- 
mother has its times and seasons. The child 
looks for signs of these varying moods and meth- 
ods of treatment; for his pains of disappointment 
arise directly on the basis of that former sense of 
regular personal presence upon which his ex- 
pectancy goes forth. 

This new element of the child's sense of per- 
sons becomes, at one period of its development, 
quite the controlling element. His action in the 
presence of the persons of the household becomes 
hesitating and watchful. Especially does he watch 
the face, for any expressive indications of what 
treatment is to be expected ; for facial expression 
is now the most regular as well as the most deli- 
cate indication. Special observations on H.'s 
responses to changes in facial expression up to 
the age of twenty months showed most subtle 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 85 

sensibility to these differences; and normal chil- 
dren all do. Animals are also very expert at 
this. 

All through the child's second year, and 
longer, his sense of the persons around him is 
in this stage. The incessant "why?" with which 
he greets any action affecting him, or any in- 
formation given him, is witness to the simple 
puzzle of the apparent capriciousness of persons. 
Of course he can not understand "why"; so the 
simple fact to him is that mamma will or won't, 
he knows not beforehand which. He is unable 
to anticipate the treatment in detail, and he has 
not of course learned any principles of interpre- 
tation of the conduct of father or mother lying 
back of the details. 

But in all this period there is germinating in 
his consciousness — and this very uncertainty is an 
important element of it — the seed of a far-reaching 
thought. His sense of persons — moving, pleasure- 
or-pain-giving, uncertain but self-directing per- 
sons — is now to become a sense of agency, of 
power, which is yet not the power of the regular- 
moving door on its hinges or the rhythmic swing- 
ing of the pendulum of the clock. The sense of 
personal agency is now forming, and it again is 
potent for still further development of the social 
consciousness. It is just here, I think, that imi- 
tation becomes so important in the child's life. 
This is imitation's opportunity. The infant 
watches to see how others act, because his own 
weal and woe depends upon this "how"; and in- 
asmuch as he knows not what to anticipate, his 
mind is open to every suggestion of movement. 
So he falls to imitating. His attention dwells 
upon details, and by the principle of adaptation 



86 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

which imitation expresses, it acts out these de- 
tails for himself. 

It is an interesting detail, that at this stage 
the child begins to grow capricious himself; to 
feel that he can do whatever he likes. Sug- 
gestion begins to lose the regularity of its work- 
ing, for it meets the child's growing sense of his 
own agency. The youthful hero becomes "con- 
trary." At this period it is that obedience begins 
to grow hard, and its meaning begins to dawn 
upon the child as the great reality. For it means 
the subjection of his own agency, his own liberty 
to be capricious, to the agency and liberty of 
some one else. 

3. With all this, the child's distinction between 
and among the persons who constantly come into 
contact with him grows on apace, in spite of the 
element of irregularity of the general fact of 
personality. As he learned before the difference 
between one presence and another, so now he 
learns the difference between one character and 
another. Every character is more or less regu- 
lar in its irregularity. It has its tastes and modes 
of action, its temperament and type of command. 
This the child learns late in the second year and 
thereafter. He behaves differently when the 
father is in the room. He is quick to obey one 
person, slow to obey another. He cries aloud, 
pulls his companions, and behaves reprehensibly 
generally, when no adult is present who has au- 
thority or will to punish him. This stage in his 
'' knowledge of man " leads to very marked dif- 
ferences of conduct on his part. 

4. He now goes on to acquire real self-conscious- 
ness and social feeling. This stage is so important 
that we may give to it a separate heading below. 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 87 

It may not be amiss to sum up what has been 
said about Personality-Suggestion. It is a gen- 
eral term for the information which the child 
gets about persons. It develops through three 
or four roughly distinguished stages, all of which 
illustrate what is called the '' projective " sense of 
personality.* There is, i. A bare distinction of 
persons from things on the ground of peculiar pain- 
movement-pleasure experiences. 2. A sense of 
the irregularity or capriciousness of the behav- 
iour of these persons, which suggests personal 
agency. 3. A distinction, vaguely felt perhaps, but 
wonderfully reflected in the child's actions, be- 
tween the modes of behaviour ox personal characters 
of different persons. 4. After his sense of his own 
agency arises by the process of imitation, he gets 
what is really self-consciousness and social feeling. 

Self -consciousness. — So far as we have now gone 
the child has only a very dim distinction between 
himself as a person and the other persons who 
move about him. The persons are " projective " 
to him, mere bodies or external objects of a 
peculiar sort classed together because they show 
common marks. Yet in the sense of agency, he 
has already begun, as we saw, to find in himself 
a mental nucleus, or centre. This comes about 

* It is very remarkable that in the child's bashfulness we 
find a native nervous response to the presence of persons. 
And it is curious to note that, besides the general gregarious- 
ness vi^hich many animals have, they show in many instances 
special responses of the presence of creatures of their own 
kind or of other kinds. Dogs seem to recognise dogs by 
S7nell. So with cats, which also respond instinctively with 
strong repulsion to the smell of dogs. Horses seem to be 
guided by sight. Fowls are notoriously blind to shapes of 
fowls, but depend on hearing the cries of their kind or their 
young. 

7 



88 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

from his tendency to fall into the imitation of 
the acts of others. 

Now as he proceeds with these imitations of 
others, he finds himself gradually understanding 
the others, by coming, through doing the same 
actions with them, to discover what they are feel- 
ing, what their motives are, what the laws of their 
behaviour. For example, he sees his father han- 
dle a pin, then suddenly make a face as he pricks 
himself, and throws the pin away. All this is 
simply a puzzle to the child; his father's conduct 
is capricious, "projective." But the child's curi- 
osity in the matter takes the form of imitation ; 
he takes up the pin himself and goes through the 
same manipulation of it that his father did. Thus 
he gets himself pricked, and with it has the im- 
pulse to throw the pin away. By imitating his 
father he has now discovered what was inside 
the father's mind, the pain and the motive of the 
action. 

This way of proceeding in reference to the 
actions of others, of which many examples might 
be given, has a twofold significance in the devel- 
opment of the child; and because of this twofold 
significance it is one of the most important facts 
of psychology. Upon it rest, in the opinion of 
the present writer, correct views of ethics and 
social philosophy. 

I. By such imitation the child learns to asso- 
ciate his own sense of physical power, together 
with hisown private pleasures and pains, with the 
personal actions which were before observed, it is 
true, in other persons but not understood. The 
act of the father has now become his own. So 
one by one the various attributes which he has 
found to be characteristic of the persons of his 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 89 

social circle, become his, in his own thought. He 
is now for himself an agent who has the marks of 
a Person or a Self. He now understands fi'om 
the inside all the various personal suggestions. 
What he saw persons do is now no longer " pro- 
jective" — simply there, outside, in the environ- 
ment; it has become what we call '* subjective." 
The details are grouped and held together by the 
sense of agency working itself out in his imitative 
struggles. 

This is what we mean by Self-consciousness. 
It is not an inborn thing with the child. He 
gradually acquires it. And it is not a sense of a 
distinct and separate self, first known and then 
compared with other persons. On the contrary, 
it is gradually built up in the child's mind from 
the same material exactly as that of which he 
makes up his thought of other persons. The 
deeds he can do he first sees others doing; only 
then can he imitate them and find out that he 
also is a being who can perform them. 

So it goes all through our lives. Our sense of 
Self is constantly changing, constantly being en- 
riched. We have not the same thought of self 
two days in succession. To-day I think of my- 
self as something to be proud of, to-morrow as 
something to be ashamed of. To-day I learn 
something from you, and the thought that it is 
common to you and to me is the basis of my 
sympathy with you. To-morrow 1 learn to com- 
mit the unworthy act which Mr. A. commits, and 
the thought that he and I are so far the same is 
the basis of the common disapproval which I feel 
of him and me. 

2. The second result of this imitative learning 
about personality is of equal importance. When 



90 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

the child has taken up an action by imitation and 
made it subjective, finding out that personality 
has an inside, something more than the mere 
physical body, then he reads this fact back into 
the other persons also. He says to himself: "He 
too, my little brother, must have in him a sense 
of agency similar to this of mine. He acts imi- 
tatively, too; he has pleasures and pains; he shows 
sympathy for me, just as I do for him. So do 
all the persons with whom I have become so far 
acquainted. They are, then, ' subjects ' as I am 
— something richer than the mere 'projects' 
which I had supposed." Soother persons become 
essentially like himself; and not only like himself, 
but identical with himself so far as the particular 
marks are concerned which he has learned from 
them. For it will be remembered that all these 
marks were at first actually taken up by imitation 
from these very persons. The child is now giv- 
ing back to his parents, teachers, etc., only the 
material which he himself took from them. He 
has enriched it, to be sure; with it he now reads 
into the other persons the great fact of subjective 
agency; but still whatever he thinks of them has 
come by way of his thought of himself, and that 
in turn was made up from them. 

This view of the other person as being the 
same in the main as the self who thinks of the 
other person, is what psychologists mean when 
they speak of the " ejective " self. It is the self 
of some one else as I think of it ; in other words, 
it is myself "ejected" out by me and lodged in 
him. 

The Social and Ethical Sense. — From this we 
see what the Social Sense is. It is the feeling 
which arises in the child or man of the real iden- 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 9 1 

tity, through its imitative origin, of all possible 
thoughts of self, whether yourself, myself, or 
some one else's self. The bond between you and 
me is not an artificial one ; it is as natural as is 
the recognition of personal individuality. And it 
is doing violence to this fundamental fact to say, 
as social science so often assumes, that the indi- 
vidual naturally separates himself or his interests 
from the self or the interests of others. He is, on 
the contrary, bound up with others from the start 
by the very laws of his growth. His social action 
and feeling are natural to him. The child can 
not be selfish only nor generous only; he may 
seem to be this or that, in this circumstance or 
that, but he is really social all the time. 

Furthermore, his sense of right and wrong, his 
Ethical Sense, grows up upon this sense of the 
social bond. This I can not stop to explain fur- 
ther. But it is only when social relationships are 
recognised as essential in the child's growth that 
we can understand the mutual obligations and 
duties which the moral life imposes upon us all. 

How to Observe Children^ with Especial Refer- 
ence to Observations of Imitation. — There are one 
or two considerations of such practical impor- 
tance to all those who wish to observe children 
that I venture to throw them together — only say- 
ing, by way of introduction, that nothing less 
than the child's personality is at stake in the 
method and matter of its imitations. The Self is 
really the form in which the personal influences 
surrounding the child take on their new individu- 
ality. 

I. No observations are of much importance 
which are not accompanied by a detailed state- 
ment of the personal influences which have affect- 



92 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

ed the child. This is the more important since 
the child sees few persons, and sees them con- 
stantly. It is not only likely — it is inevitable — 
that he make up his personality^ under limitations of 
heredity, by imitation, out of the "copy" set in 
the actions, temper, emotions, of the persons who 
build around him the social enclosure of his child- 
hood. It is only necessary to watch a tw^o-year- 
old closely to see what members of the family 
are giving him his personal " copy " — to find out 
whether he sees his mother constantly and his 
father seldom; whether he plays much with other 
children, and what in some degree their disposi- 
tions are ; whether he is growing to be a person 
of subjection, equality, or tyranny; whether he is 
assimilating the elements of some low unorganized 
social personality from his foreign nurse. The 
boy or girl is a social "monad," to use Leibnitz's 
figure in a new context, a little world, which re- 
flects the whole system of influences coming to 
stir his sensibility. And just in so far as his sen- 
sibilities are stirred, he imitates, and forms habits 
of imitating; and habits? — they are character ! 

2. A point akin to the first is this : the obser- 
vation of each child should describe with great 
accuracy the child's relations to other children. 
Has he brothers or sisters ? how many of each, 
and of what age ? Does he sleep in the same bed 
or room with them ? Do they play much with one 
another alone ? The reason is very evident. An 
only child has only adult "copy." He can not 
interpret his father's actions, or his mother's, of- 
tentimes. He imitates very blindly. He lacks the 
more childish example of a brother or sister near 
himself in age. And this difference is of very 
great importance to his development. He lacks 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 93 

the Stimulus, for example, of games in which per- 
sonification is a direct tutor to selfhood, as I shall 
remark further on. And while he becomes preco- 
cious in some lines of instruction, he fails in va- 
riety of imagination, in richness of fancy, at the 
same time that his imaging processes are more 
wild and uncontrolled. The dramatic, in his sense 
of social situations, is largely hidden. It is a 
very great mistake to isolate children, especially 
to separate off one or two children. One alone 
is perhaps the worse, but two alone are subject to 
the other element of social danger which I may 
mention next. 

3. Observers should report with especial care 
all cases of unusually close relationship between 
children in youth, such as childish favoritism, 
" platonic friendships," " chumming," in school or 
home, etc. We have in these facts — and there is a 
very great variety of them — an exaggeration of the 
social or imitative tendency, a narrowing down of 
the personal sensibility to a peculiar line of well- 
formed influences. It has never been studied by 
writers either on the genesis of social emotion or 
on the practice of education. To be sure, teach- 
ers have been alive to the pros and cons of allow- 
ing children and students to room together; but 
that has been with view to the possibility of direct 
immoral or unwholesome contagion. This dan- 
ger is certainly real ; but we, as psychological 
observers, and above all as teachers and leaders 
of our children, must go deeper than that. Con- 
sider, for example, the possible influence of a 
school chum and roommate upon a girl in her 
teens ; for this is only an evident case of what all 
isolated children are subject to. A sensitive na- 
ture, a girl whose very life is a branch of a social 



94 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

tree, is placed in a new environment, to engraft 
upon the members of her mutilated self — her very 
personality; it is nothing less than that — utterly 
new channels of supply. The only safety possible, 
the only way to conserve the lessons of her past, 
apart from the veriest chance, and to add to the 
structure of her present character, lies in securing 
for her the greatest possible variety of social in- 
fluences. Instead of this, she is allowed to meet, 
eat, walk, talk, lie down at night, and rise in the 
morning, with one other person, a " copy " set before 
her, as immature in all likelihood as herself, or, if 
not so, yet a single personality, put there to wrap 
around her growing self the confining cords of 
unassimilated and foreign habit. Above all things, 
fathers, mothers, teachers, elders, give the chil- 
dren room ! They need all that they can get, and 
their personalities will grow to fill it. Give them 
plenty of companions, fill their lives with variety ; 
variety is the soul of originality, and its only 
source of supply. The ethical life itself, the boy's, 
the girl's, conscience, is born in the stress of the 
conflicts of suggestion, born right out of his imi- 
tative hesitations ; and just this is the analogy 
which he must assimilate and depend upon in his 
own conflicts for self-control and social conti- 
nence. So impressively true is this from the hu- 
man point of view that, in my opinion — formed, 
it is true, from the very few data accessible on 
such points, still a positive opinion — friendships 
of a close exclusive kind should be discouraged 
or broken up, except when under the immediate 
eye of the wise parent or guardian ; and even when 
allowed, these relationships should, in all cases, 
be used to entrain the sympathetic and moral sen- 
timents into a wider field of social exercise. 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 95 

One of the merits of the great English schools 
and of the free schools of America is that in them 
the boys acquire, from necessity, the independ- 
ence of sturdy character, and the self-restraint 
which is self-imposed. The youth brought up to 
mind a tutor often fails of the best discipline. 

4. The remainder of this section may be de- 
voted to the further emphasis of the need of close 
observation of children's games, especially those 
which may be best described as "society games." 
All those who have given even casual observation 
to the doings of the nursery have been impressed 
with the extraordinary facility of the child's mind, 
from the second year onward, in imagining and 
plotting social and dramatic situations. It has 
not been so evident, however, to these casual ob- 
servers, nor to many really more skilled, that they 
were observing in these fancy plays the putting 
together anew of fragments, or larger pieces, of 
the adult's mental history. Here, in these games, 
we see the actual use which our children make of 
the personal " copy " material which they get from 
you and me. If a man study these games patient- 
ly in his own children, and analyze them out, he 
gradually sees emerge from within the inner con- 
sciousness a picture of the boy's own father, whom 
he aspires to be like, and whose actions he seeks 
to generalize and apply. The picture is poor, for 
the child takes only what he is sensible to. And 
it does seem often, as Sighele pathetically notices 
on a large social scale, and as the Westminster 
divines have urged without due sense of the pa- 
thetic and home-coming point of it, that he takes 
more of the bad in us for reproduction than of the 
good ! But, be this as it may, what we give him 
is all he gets. Fleredity does not stop with birth; 



g6 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

it is then only beginning. And the pity of it is 
that this element of heredity, this reproduction of 
the fathers in the children, which might be used 
to redeem the new-forming personality from the 
heritage of past commonness or impurity, is sim- 
ply left to take its course for the further estab- 
lishing and confirmation of it. Was there ever a 
group of school children who did not leave the 
real school to make a play school, setting up a 
box for one of their number to sit on and "take 
off " the teacher ? Was there ever a child who 
did not play "church," and force the impro- 
vised "papa" into the pulpit? Were there ever 
children who did not " buy " things from fan- 
cied stalls in every corner of the nursery, after 
they had once seen an elder drive a trade in the 
market ? The point is this : the child's per- 
sonality grows ; growth is always by action ; he 
clothes upon himself the scenes of the parent's 
life and acts them out ; so he grows in what he 
is, what he understands, and what he is able to 
perform. 

In order to be of more direct service to observ- 
ers of games of this character, let me give a short 
account of an observation of the kind made some 
time ago — one of the simplest of many actual 
situations which my two little girls, Helen and 
Elizabeth, have acted out together. It is a very 
commonplace case, a game the elements of which 
are evident in their origin ; but I choose this 
rather than one more complex, since observers are 
usually not psychologists, and they find the ele- 
mentary the more instructive. 

On May 2 I was sitting on the porch alone 
with the children — the two mentioned above, 
aged respectively four and a half and two and a 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 97 

half years. Helen, the elder, told Elizabeth that 
she was her little baby ; that is, Helen became 
" mamma," and Elizabeth the " baby." The young- 
er responded by calling her sister " mamma," and 
the play began. 

" You have been asleep, baby. Now it is time 
to get up," said mamma. Baby rose from the floor 
— first falling down in order to rise ! — was seized 
upon by "mamma," taken to the railing to an imagi- 
nary washstand, and her face w^ashed by rubbing. 
Her articles of clothing were then named in im- 
agination, and put on, one by one, in the most 
detailed and interesting fashion. During all this 
" mamma " kept up a stream of baby talk to her 
infant: "Now your stockings, my darling; now 
your skirt, sweetness — O! no — not yet — your 
shoes first," etc., etc. Baby acceded to all the de- 
tails with more than the docility which real infants 
usually show. When this was done — " Now we 
must go tell papa good-morning, dearie," said 
mamma. " Yes, mamma," came the reply ; and 
hand in hand they started to find papa. I, 
the spectator, carefully read my newspaper, 
thinking, however, that the reality of papa, see- 
ing that he was so much in evidence, would break 
in upon the imagined situation. But not so. 
Mamma led her baby directly past me to the end of 
the piazza, to a column in the corner. " There's 
papa," said mamma ; "now tell him good-morn- 
ing." — "Good-morning, papa; I am very well," 
said baby, bowing low to the column. "That's 
good," said mamma, in a gruff, lo7u voice, which 
caused in the real papa a thrill of amused self- 
consciousness most difficult to contain. " Now 
you must have your breakfast," said mamma. The 
seat of a chair was made a breakfast table, the 



98 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

baby's feigned bib put on, and her porridge care- 
fully administered, with all the manner of the 
nurse who usually directs their breakfast. *' Now " 
(after the meal, which suddenly became dinner 
instead of breakfast), " you must take your nap," 
said mamma. "No, mamma; I don't want to," 
said baby. " But you must." — " No ; you be baby, 
and take the nap." — "But all the other children 
have gone to sleep, dearest, and the doctor says you 
must,'' said mamma. This convinced baby, and she 
lay down on the floor. " But I haven't undressed 
you." So then came all the detail of undressing; 
and mamma carefully covered her up on the floor 
with a light shawl, saying :" Spring is coming 
now; that'll be enough. Now shut your eyes, 
and go to sleep." — " But you haven't kissed me, 
mamma," said the little one. " Oh, of course, my 
darling!" — so a long siege of kissing! Then 
baby closed her eyes very tight, while mamma 
went on tiptoe away to the end of the porch. 
"Don't go away, mamma," said baby. "No; 
mamma wouldn't leave her darling," came the 
reply. 

So this went on. The nap over, a walk was 
proposed, hats put on, etc., the mamma exercising 
great care and solicitude for her baby. One 
further incident to show this: when the baby's 
hat was put on — the real hat — mamma tied the 
strings rather tight. " Oh ! you hurt, mamma," 
said baby. "No; mamma wouldn't draw the 
strings too tight. Let mamma kiss it. There, is 
that better, my darling?" — all comically true to 
a certain sweet maternal tenderness which I had 
no difficulty in tracing. 

Now in such a case what is to be reported, 
of course, is the facts. Yet knowledge of more 



THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 99 

than the facts is necessary, as I have said above, 
in order to get the full psychological lesson. 
We need just the information which concerns the 
rest of the family and the social influences of the 
children's lives. I recognised at once every 
phrase which the children used in this play, where 
they got it, what it meant in its original context, 
and how far its meaning had been modified in 
this process, called in a figure ''social heredity." 
But as that story is reported to strangers who 
have no knowledge of the children's social ante- 
cedents, how much beyond the mere facts of imi- 
tation and personification do they get from it ? 
And how much the more is this true when we ex- 
amine those complex games of the nursery which 
show the brilliant fancy for situation and drama 
of the wide-awake four-year-old ? 

Yet we psychologists are free to interpret; and 
how rich the lessons even from such a simple 
scene as this! As for Helen, what could be a 
more direct lesson — a Jived-out exercise — in sym- 
pathy, in altruistic self-denial, in the healthy ele- 
vation of her sense of self to the dignity of 
kindly offices, in the sense of responsibility and 
agency, in the stimulus to original effort and the 
designing of means to ends — and all of it with 
the best sense of the objectivity which is quite 
lost in wretched self-consciousness in us adults, 
when we personate other characters? What could 
further all this highest mental growth better than 
the game by which the lessons of her mother's 
daily life are read into the child's little self ? Then, 
in the case of Elizabeth also, certain things ap- 
pear. She obeys without command or sanction, 
she takes in from her sister the elements of per- 
sonal suggestion in their simpler childish forms. 



lOO THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

Certainly such scenes, repeated every day with 
such variation of detail, must give something 
of the sense of variety and social equality which 
real life afterward confirms and proceeds upon ; 
and lessons of the opposite character are learned 
by the same process. 

All this exercise of fancy must strengthen the 
imaginative faculty also. The prolonged situa- 
tions, maintained sometimes whole days, or pos- 
sibly weeks, give strength to the imagination and 
train the attention. I think, also, that the sense 
of essential reality, and its distinction from the 
unreal, the merely imagined, is helped by this sort 
of symbolic representation. Play has its dangers 
also — very serious ones. The adults sometimes 
set bad examples. The game gives practise in 
cunning no less than in forbearance. Possibly 
the best service of observation just now is to 
gather the facts with a view to the proper recog- 
nition and avoidance of the dangers. 

Finally, 1 may be allowed a word to interested 
parents. You can be of no use whatever to psy- 
chologists — to say nothing of the actual damage 
you may be to the children — unless you hiow 
your babies through and through. Especially the 
fathers ! They are willing to study everything 
else. They know every corner of the house famil- 
iarly, and what is done in it, except the nursery. 
A man labours for his children ten hours -a day, 
gets his life insured for their support after 
his death, and yet he lets their mental growth, 
the formation of their characters, the evolution 
of their personality, go on by absorption — if 
no worse — from common, vulgar, imported and 
changing, often immoral attendants ! Plato said 
the state should train the children ; and added 



THE CONNECTIOxN OF BODY WITH MIND. loi 

that the wisest man should rule the state. This 
is to say that the wisest man should tend his 
children ! Hugo gives us, in Jean Valjean and 
Cosette, a picture of the true paternal relation- 
ship. We hear a certain group of studies called 
the Jmmamties^ and it is right. But the best school 
in the humanities for every man is in his own 
house. 

With this goes, finally, the highest lesson of 
sport, drama, make-believe, even when we trace 
it up into the art-impulse — the lesson of personal 
freedo7?t. The child himself sets the limitations of 
the game, makes the rules, and subjects himself to 
them, and then in time pierces the bubble for 
himself, saying, " I will play no more." All this is 
the germ of self-regulation, of the control of the 
impulses, of the voluntary adoption of the ideal, 
which becomes in later life — if so be that he cling 
to it — the pearl of great price. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND PHYSIO- 
LOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY MENTAL DISEASES. 

In the foregoing pages we have had intima- 
tions of some of the important questions which 
arise about the connection of mind with body. 
The avenues of the senses are the normal ap- 
proaches to the mind through the body ; and, 
taking advantage of this, experiments are made 
upon the senses. This gives rise to Experimental 
Psychology, to which the chapter after this is de- 
voted. Besides this, however, we find the general 



I02 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

fact that a normal body must in all cases be present 
with a normal mind, and this makes it possible to 
arrange so to manipulate the body that changes 
may be produced in the mind in other ways than 
through the regular channels of sense. For ex- 
ample, we influence the mind when w^e drink too 
much tea or coffee, not to mention the greater 
changes of the same kind which are produced in 
the mind of the drinker of too much alcohol or 
other poisonous substances. All the methodical 
means of procedure by which the psychologist 
produces effects of this kind by changing the 
condition or functions of the body within itself 
belong to Physiological Psychology. So he 
modifies the respiration, changes the heart beat, 
stimulates or slows the circulation of the blood, 
paralyzes the muscles, etc. The ways of pro- 
cedure may be classified under a few heads, each 
called a method. 

I. Method of Extirpation. — This means simply 
the cutting away of a part of the body, so that 
any effect which the loss of the part makes upon 
the mind may be noted. It is used especially 
upon the brain. Pieces of the brain, great or 
small — indeed, practically the whole brain mass — 
may be removed in many animals without destroy- 
ing life. Either of the cerebral hemispheres en- 
tire, together with large portions of the other, 
maybe taken from the human brain without much 
effect upon the vital processes, considered as a 
whole; the actual results being the loss of certain 
mental functions, such as sight, hearing, power of 
movement of particular limbs, etc., according to 
the location of the part which is removed. Many 
of the facts given below under the heading of 
Localization were discovered in this w^ay, the 



THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 103 

guiding principle being that if the loss of a func- 
tion follows the removal of a certain piece of the 
brain, then that portion of the brain is directly- 
concerned in the healthy performance of that 
function. 

2. MetJiod of Artificial Stimulation. — As the 
term indicates, this method proceeds by finding 
some sort of agent by which the physiological 
processes may be started artificially ; that is, 
without the usual normal starting of these pro- 
cesses. For example, the physician who stimu- 
lates the heart by giving digitalis pursues this 
method. For psychological purposes this method 
has also been fruitful in studying the brain, and 
electricity is the agent customarily used. The 
brain is laid bare by removing part of the skull of 
the animal, and the two electrodes of a battery are 
placed upon a particular point of the brain whose 
function it is wished to determine. The current 
passes out along the nerves which are normally 
set in action from this particular region, and 
movements of the muscles follow in certain defi- 
nite parts and directions. This is an indication 
of the normal function of the part of the brain 
which is stimulated. 

Besides this method of procedure a new one, 
also by brain stimulation, has recently been em- 
ployed. It consists in stimulating a spot of the 
brain as before, but instead of observing the 
character of the movement which follows, the 
observer places galvanometers in connection with 
various members of the body and observes in 
which of the galvanometers the current comes 
out of the animal's body (the galvanometer be- 
ing a very delicate instrument for indicating the 
presence of an electric current). In this way it 



I04 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

is determined along what pathways and to what 
organs the ordinary vital stimulation passes from 
the brain, provided it be granted that the electric 
current takes the same course. 

3. Method of Intoxication^ called the " Toxic 
Method.'" — The remarks above may suffice for a 
description of this method. The results of the 
administration of toxic or poisonous agents upon 
the mind are so general and serious in their char- 
acter, as readers of De Quincy know, that very 
little precise knowledge has been acquired by 
their use. 

4. Method of Degeneration. — This consists in 
observing the progress of natural or artificially 
produced disease or damage to the tissues, mainly 
the nervous tissues, with a view to discovering the 
directions of pathways and the locations of con- 
nected functions. The degeneration or decay 
following disease or injury follows the path of 
normal physiological action, and so discloses it 
to the observer. This method is of importance to 
psychology as affording a means of locating and 
following up the course of a brain injury which 
accompanies this or that mental disease or defect. 

Results — Localization of Brain Functions. — The 
more detailed results of this sort of study, when 
considered on the side of the nervous organism, 
may be thrown together under the general head 
of Localization. The greatest result of all is 
just the discovery that there is such a thing as 
localization in the nervous system of the differ- 
ent mental functions of sensation and movement. 
We find particular parts of the nervous organism 
contributing each its share, in a more or less inde- 
pendent way, to the whole flow of the mental life; 
and in cases of injury or removal of this part or 



THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 105 

that, there is a corresponding impairment of the 
mind. 

First of all, it is found that the nervous sys- 
tem has a certain up-and-down arrangement from 
the segments of the spinal cord up to the gray 
matter of the rind or " cortex " of the large masses 
or hemispheres in the skull, to which the word 
brain is popularly applied. This up-and-down 
arrangement shows three so-called '' levels " of 
function. Beginning with the spinal cord, we 
find the simplest processes, and they grow more 
complex as we go up toward the brain. 

The lowest, or " third level," includes all the 
functions which the spinal cord, and its upper 
termination, called the " medulla," are able to per- 
form alone — that is, without involving necessarily 
the activity of the nervous centres and brain 
areas which lie above them. Such " third-level " 
functions are those of the life-sustaining processes 
generally : breathing, heart-beat, vasomotor ac- 
tion (securing the circulation of the blood), etc. 
These are all called Automatic processes. They 
go regularly on from day to day, being constantly 
stimulated by the normal changes in the physio- 
logical system itself, and having no need of inter- 
ference from the mind of the individual. 

In addition to the automatic functions, there 
is a second great class of processes which are also 
managed from the third level ; that is, by the dis- 
charge of nervous energy from particular parts of 
the spinal cord. These are the so-called Reflex 
functions. They include all those responses which 
the nervous system makes to stimulations from 
the outside, in which the mind has no alternative 
or control. They happen whether or no. For 
example, when an object comes near the eye the 



io6 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

lid flies to reflexly. If a tap be made upon the 
knee while one sits with the legs crossed the foot 
flies up reflexly. Various reflexes may be brought 
out in a sleeper by slight stimulations to this or 
that region of his body. Furthermore, each of 
the senses has its own set of reflex adjustments 
to the stimulations which come to it. The eye 
accommodates itself in the most delicate way to 
the intensity of the light, the distance of the ob- 
ject, the degree of elevation, and the angular dis- 
placement of what one looks at. The taking of 
food into the mouth sets up all sorts of reflex 
movements which do not cease until the food is 
safely lodged in the stomach, and so on through 
a series of physiological adaptations which are 
simply marvellous in their variety and extent. 
These processes belong to the third level ; and it 
may surprise the uninitiated to know that not 
only is the mind quite ^' out of it " so far as these 
functions are concerned, but that the brain proper 
is ''out of it " also. Most of these reflexes not 
only go on when the brain is removed from the 
skull, but it is an interesting detail that they are 
generally exaggerated under these conditions. 
This shows that while the third or lowest level 
does its own work, it is yet in a sense under the 
weight — what physiologists call the inhibiting 
action — of the higher brain masses. It is not 
allowed to magnify its part too much, nor to work 
out of its proper time and measure. The nervous 
apparatus involved in these " third-level " func- 
tions may be called the " reflex circuit " (see Fig. 
2), the path being from the sense organ up to the 
centre by a "sensory" nerve, and then out by a 
"motor " nerve to the muscle. 

Going upward in the nervous system, we next 



THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 107 



find a certain group of bodies within the gross 
mass of the brain, certain centres lying between 
the hemispheres above and the medulla and spinal 
cord below, and in direct connection by nervous 
tracts with both of these. The technical names 
of the more important of these organs are these : 
the "corpora striata," or striped bodies, of which 
there are two, the 
"optic thalanii," also 
two in number, and 
the "cerebellum" or 
little brain, situated 
behind. These make 
up what is called 
the "second level " 
in the system. They 
seem to be especial- 
ly concerned with 
the life of sensation. 
When the centres 
lying above them, 
the hemispheres, are 
removed, the animal 
is still able to see, 
hear, etc., and still 
able to carry out his 

well-knit habits of action in response to what he 
sees and hears. But that is about all. A bird 
treated thus, for example, these second-level cen- 
tres being still intact while the hemispheres are 
removed, retains his normal appearance, being 
quite able to stand upon his feet, to fly, walk, etc. 
His reflexes are also unimpaired and his inner 
physiological processes ; but it soon becomes 
noticeable that his mental operations are limited 
very largely to sensations. He sees his food as 




sense organ 



Fig. 2. — s c mt 
sp mp c mt =■ 



= reflex circuit ; s c 
voluntary circuit. 



Io8 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

usual, but does not remember its use, and makes 
no attempt to eat it. He sees other birds, but 
does not respond to their advances. He seems 
to have forgotten all his education, to have lost 
all the meanings of things, to have practically no 
intelligence. A dog in this condition no longer 
fears the whip, no longer responds to his name, 
no longer steals food. On the side of his conduct 
we find that all the actions which he had learned 
by training now disappear ; the trick dog loses all 
his tricks. What was called Apperception in the 
earlier chapter seems to have been taken away 
with the hemispheres. 

Coming to the " first level," the highest of all, 
both in anatomical position and in the character 
of the functions over which it presides, we see at 
once what extraordinary importance it has. It 
comprises the cortex of the hemispheres, which 
taken together are called the cerebrum. It con- 
sists of the parts which we supposed cut out of the 
pigeon and dog just mentioned ; and when we re- 
member what these animals lose by its removal, 
we see what the normal animal or man owes to 
the integrity of this organ. It is above all the 
organ of mind. If we had to say that the mind 
as such is located anywhere, we should say in the 
gray matter of the cortex of the hemispheres of 
the brain. For although, as we saw, animals with- 
out this organ can still see and hear and feel, yet 
we also saw that they could do little else and 
could learn to do nothing more. All the higher 
operations of mind come back only when we 
think of the animal as having normal brain 
hemispheres. 

Further, we find this organ in some degree 
duplicating the function of the second-level cen- 



THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 109 

tres, for fibres go out from these intermediate 
masses to certain areas of the hemispheres, which 
reproduce locally the senses of hearing, sight, etc. 
By these fibres the functions of the senses are 
"projected" out to the surface of the brain, and 
the term "projection fibres" is applied to the 
nerves which make these connections. The hemi- 
spheres are not content even with the most im- 
portant of all functions — the strictly intelligent — 
but they are jealous, so to speak, of the simple 
sensations which the central brain masses are ca- 
pable of awaking. And in the very highest ani- 
mals, probably only monkeys and man, we find 
that the hemispheres have gone so far with their 
jealousy as to usurp the function of sensation. 
This is seen in the singular fact that with a 
monkey or man the removal of the cortical cen- 
tres makes the animal permanently blind or deaf, 
as the case may be, while in the lower animals 
such removal does not have this result, so long as 
the " second-level " organs are unimpaired. The 
brain paths of the functions of the second and 
first levels taken together constitute the so-called 
" voluntary circuit " (see Fig. 2). 

In addition to this general demarcation of 
functions as higher and lower — first, second, and 
third llvel — in their anatomical seat, many in- 
teresting discoveries have been made in the locali- 
zation of the simpler functions in the cortex itself. 
The accompanying figures (Figs. 3 and 4) will 
show the principle centres which have been deter- 
mined ; and it is not necessary to dwell upon ad- 
ditional details which are still under discussion. 
The areas marked out are in general the same on 
both hemispheres, and that is to say that most of 
the centres are duplicated. The speech centres, 



no 



THE STORY OF THE MIND. 



however, are on one side only. And in certain 
cases the nervous fibres which connect the cortex 
with the body-organs cross below the brain to the 
opposite side of the body. This is always true in 
cases of muscular movement ; the movements of 
the right side of the body are controlled by the 
left hemisphere, and vice versa. The stimulations 
coming in from the body to the brain generally 




Fig. 3.— Outer surface of left hemisphere of the brain (modified 
from Exner; : «, fissure of Rolando ; b^ fissure of Sylvius. 



travel on the same side, although in certain cases 
parallel impulses are also sent over to the other 
hemisphere as well. For example, the very im- 
portant optic nerve, which is necessary to vision, 
comes from each eye separately in a large bunch 
of fibres, and divides at the base of the brain, so 
that each eye sends impulses directly to the visual 
centres of both hemispheres. 



THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. Ill 

Of all the special questions which have arisen 
about the localization of functions in the nervous 
system, that of the function of certain areas known 
as " motor centres " has been eagerly discussed. 
The region on both sides of the fissure of Ro- 
lando in Fig. 3 contains a number of areas which 
give, when stimulated with electricity, very defi- 
nite and regular movements of certain muscles 




~sp7ienoidal 

Fig. 4.— Inner (mesial) surface of the right hemisphere of the 
brain (modified from Schafer and Horsley). In both figures 
the shaded area is the motor zone. 



on the opposite side of the body. By careful ex- 
ploration of these areas the principal muscular 
combinations — those for facial movements, neck 
movements, movements of the arm, trunk, legs, 
tail, etc. — have been very precisely ascertained. 
It was concluded from these facts that these areas 
were respectively the centres for the discharge of 
the nervous impulses running in each case to the 
muscles which were moved. The evidence re- 



112 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

cently forthcoming, however, is leading investi- 
gators to think that there is no cortical centre for 
the "motor" or outgoing processes properly so 
called, and that these Rolandic areas, although 
called " motor," are really centres for the mcom- 
ing reports of the movements of the respective 
muscles after the movements take place, and also 
for the preservation of the memories of movement 
which the mind must have before a particular 
movement can be brought about (the mental 
images of movement which we called on an earlier 
page Kinaesthetic Equivalents). These centres 
being aroused in the thought of the movement 
desired, which is the necessary mental preparation 
for the movement, they in turn stimulate the real 
motor centres which lie below the cortex at the 
second level. This is in the present writer's judg- 
ment the preferable interpretation of the evidence 
which we now have. 

The Speech Zone. — Many interesting facts of 
the relation of body and mind have come to light 
in connection with the speech functions. Speech 
is complex, both on the psychological and also 
on the physiological side, and easily deranged in 
ways that take on such remarkable variety that 
they are a source of very fruitful indications to 
the inquirer. It is now proved that speech is not 
a faculty, a single definite capacity which a man 
either has or has not. It is rather a complex 
thing resulting from the combined action of many 
brain centres, and, on the mental side, of many so- 
called faculties, or functions. In order to speak, 
a man normally requires what is called a "zone" 
in his brain, occupying a large portion of the out- 
side lateral region (see Fig. 5). It extends, as in 
the figure, from the Rolandic region (A'), where 



THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 1 13 





Fig. 5.— The speech zone (after Collins). 



114 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

the kinjesthetic lip-and-tongue memories of words 
are aroused, backward into the temporal region 
(A), where the auditory memories of words spring 
up ; then upward to the angular gyrus in the 
rear or occipital region (V), where in turn the 
visual pictures of the written or printed words 
rise to perform their part in the performance ; and 
with all this combination there is associated the 
centre for the movements of the hand and arm em- 
ployed in writing, an area higher up in the Rolandic 
region (above K). In the same general zone we also 
find the music function located, the musical sounds 
being received in the auditory centre very near 
the area for words heard (A), while the centre for 
musical expression is also in the Rolandic region. 
Furthermore, as may be surmised, the reading of 
musical notation requires the visual centre, just 
as does the reading of words. In addition to this, 
we find the curious fact that the location of the 
whole speech zone is in one hemisphere only. Its 
location on the left or the right, in particular 
cases, is also an mdication as to whether the per- 
son is right- or left-handed; this means that the 
process which makes the individual either "right- 
or left-handed is probably located in the speech 
zone, or near it. A large majority of persons 
have the speech zone in the left hemisphere, 
and are right-handed ; it will be seen that the 
figure (5) shows the left hemisphere of the 
brain, and with it the right hand holding the 
pen. 

Defects of Speech — Aphasia. — The sorts of in- 
jury which may befall a large zone of the brain 
are so many that well-nigh endless forms of 
speech defect occur. All impairment of speech is 
called Aphasia, and it is called Motor Aphasia 



^ 



THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH xMIND. 115 

when the apparatus is damaged on the side of 
movement. 

If the fibres coming out from the speech zone 
be impaired, so that the impulses can not go to the 
muscles of articulation and breathing, we have 
Subcortical Motor Aphasia. Its peculiarity is 
that the person knows perfectly what he wants to 
say, but yet can not speak the words. He is able 
to read silently, can understand the speech of 
others, and can remember music ; but, with his in- 
ability to speak, he is generally also unable to 
write or to perform on a musical instrument (yet 
this last is not always the case). Then we find 
new variations if his " lesion "■ — as all kinds of 
local nervous defects are called — is in the brain 
centre in the Rolandic region, where arise the 
memories of the movements required. In this 
latter case the aphasic patient can readily imitate 
speech so long as he hears it, can imitate writing 
so long as it lies before him, but can not do any 
independent speaking or writing for himself. With 
this there goes another fact which characterizes 
this form of aphasia, and which is called Cortical, 
as opposed to the Subcortical Motor Aphasia de- 
scribed above, that the person may not be able 
even to think of the words which are appropriate 
to express his meaning. This is the case when 
those persons who depend upon the memories of 
the movements of lip and tongue in their normal 
speech are injured as described. 

Besides the two forms of Motor Aphasia now 
spoken of, there are certain other speech defects 
which are called Sensory Aphasia. When a le- 
sion occurs in one of the areas of the brain in the 
speech zone in which the requisite memories of 
words seen or heard have their seat — as when a 



Il6 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

ball player is struck over the sight centre in the 
back of the head — special forms of sensory apha- 
sia show themselves. The ball player will, in this 
case, have Visual Aphasia, being unable to speak 
in proportion as he is accustomed in his speak- 
ing to depend upon the images of written or 
printed words. He is quite unable to read or 
write from a copy which he sees; but he may 
be able, nevertheless, to write from dictation, and 
also to repeat words which are spoken to him. 
This is because in these latter performances he 
uses his auditory centre, and not the visual. There 
are, indeed, some persons who are so independent 
of vision that the loss of the visual centre does 
not much impair their normal speech. 

When, again, an injury comes to the auditory 
centre in the temporal region, we find the con- 
verse of the case just described ; the defect is then 
called Auditory Aphasia. The patient can not 
now speak or write words which he hears, and 
can not speak spontaneously in proportion as he 
is accustomed to depend upon his memories of 
the word sounds. But in most cases he can still 
both speak and write printed or written words 
which he sees before him. 

These cases may serve to give the reader an 
idea of the remarkable delicacy and complex- 
ity of the function of speech. It becomes more 
evident when, instead of cases of gross lesion, 
which destroy a whole centre, or cut the connec-. 
tions between centres, we have disease of the 
brain which merely destroys a few cells in the 
gray matter here or there. We then find partial loss 
of speech, such as is seen in patients who lack 
only certain classes of words ; perhaps the verbs, 
or the conjunctions, or proper names, etc.; or in 



THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 117 

the patients who speak, but yet do not say what 
they mean ; or, again, in persons who have two 
verbal series going on at once, one of which they 
can not control, and which they often attribute 
to an enemy inside them, in control of the vocal 
organs, or to a persecutor outside whose abuse 
they can not avoid hearing. In cases of violent 
sick headache we often miscall objects without 
detecting it ourselves, and in delirium the speech 
mechanism works from violent organic discharges 
altogether without control. The senile old man 
talks nonsense — so-called gibberish — thinkmg he 
is discoursing properly. 

In the main cases of Aphasia of distinct sen- 
sory and motor types psychological analysis is 
now so adequate and the anatomical localiza- 
tion so far advanced that the physicians have 
sufficient basis for their diagnosis, and make in- 
ferences looking toward treatment. Many cases 
of tumour, of clot on the brain, of local pressure 
from the skull, and of haemorrhage or stopping up 
of the blood vessels in a limited area, have been 
cured through the indications given by the particu- 
lar forms and degrees of aphasia shown by the pa- 
tients. The skull is opened at the place indicated 
by the defect of speech, the lesion found where 
the diagnosis suggested, and the cause removed. 

This account of Localization will suggest to 
the reader the truth that there is no science of 
Phrenology. No progress has been made in local- 
izing the intelligence ; and the view is now very 
general that the whole brain, with all its inter- 
change of impulses from part to part, is involved 
in thinking. As for locating particular emotions 
and qualities of temperament, it is quite absurd. 
Furthermore, the irregularities of the skull do not 



Il8 TPIE STORY OF THE MIND. 

indicate local brain differences. It is thought that 
the relative weight of the brain may be an indica- 
tion of intellectual endowment, especially when 
the brain weight is compared with the weight of 
the rest of the body, and that culture in particu- 
lar lines increases the surface of the cortex by 
deepening and multiplying the convolutions. But 
these statements can not be applied off-hand to 
individuals, as the practise of phrenology would 
require. 

Defects of Memory — Ajnnesia. — The cases given 
just above, where the failure of speech was seen 
to be due to the loss of certain memories of words, 
illustrate also a series of mental defects, which are 
classed together as Amnesias. Any failure in mem- 
ory, except the normal lapses which we call for- 
getfulness, is included under this term. Just as 
the loss of word memories occasions inability to 
speak, so that of other sorts of memories occa- 
sions other functional disturbances. A patient 
may forget objects, and so not know how to use 
his penknife or to put on his shoes. He may for- 
get events, and so give false witness as to the past. 

One may forget himself also, and so have, in 
some degree, a different character, as is seen, in 
an exaggerated way, in persons who have so- 
called Dual Personality. These patients sudden- 
ly fall into a secondary state, in which they forget 
all the events of their ordinary lives, but remem- 
ber all the events of the earlier periods of the sec- 
ondary personality. This state may be described 
as " general " amnesia, in contrast to the "par- 
tial" amnesia of the other cases given, in which 
only particular classes of memories are impaired. 

The impairment of memory with advancing 
years also illustrates both ''general " and '' par- 



THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 1 19 

tial" Amnesia. The old man loses his memory of 
names, then of other words, then of events, and so 
gradually becomes incapable of much retention of 
any sort. 

Defects of Will — Aboulia. — A few words may 
suffice to characterize the great class of mental 
defects which arise on the side of action. All in- 
ability to perform intentional acts is called Abou- 
lia, or lack of Will. Certain defects of speech 
mentioned above illustrate this : cases in which 
the patient knows what he wishes to say and yet 
can not say it. This is the type of all the "par- 
tial " Aboulias. There may be no lack in deter- 
mination and effort, yet the action may be impos- 
sible. But, in contrast with this, there is a more 
grave defect called "general " Aboulia. Here we 
find a weakening of resolution, of determination, 
associated with some lack of self-control showing 
itself frequently by a certain hesitation or indeci- 
sion. The patient says : " I can not make up my 
mind," " I can not decide." In exaggerated cases 
it becomes a form of mania called "insanity of 
doubt." The patient stands before a door for an 
hour hesitating as to whether he can open it or not, 
or carries to its extreme the experience we all some- 
times have of finding it necessary to return again 
and again to make sure that we have locked the 
door or shut the draught of the furnace. 

With these illustrations our notice of mental 
defects may terminate. The more complex 
troubles, the various insanities, manias, phobias, 
etc., can not be briefly described. Moreover, they 
are still wrapped in the profoundest obscurity. To 
the psychologist, however, there are certain guid- 
ing principles through the maze of facts, and I 
may state them in conclusion. 
9 



I20 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

First, all mental troubles involve diseases of the 
brain and can be cured only as the brain is cured. 
It does not follow, of course, that in certain cases 
treatment by mental agencies, such as suggestion, 
arousing of expectation, faith, etc., may not be 
more helpful here, when wisely employed, than in 
troubles which do not involve the mind ; but yet 
the end to be attained is a physical as well as a 
mental cure, and the means in the present state of 
knowledge, at any rate, are mainly physical 
means. The psychologist knows practically noth- 
ing about the laws which govern the influence of 
mind on body. The principle of Suggestion is 
so obscure in its concrete working that the most 
practised and best-informed operators find it im- 
possible to control its use or to predict its results. 
To give countenance, in this state of things, to 
any pretended system or practice of mind cure, 
Christian science, spiritual healing, etc., which 
leads to the neglect of ordinary medical treatment, 
is to discredit the legitimate practice of medi- 
cine and to let loose an enemy dangerous to the 
public health. 

Moreover, such things produce a form of hys- 
terical subjectivism which destroys sound judg- 
ment, and dissolves the sense of reality which it 
has taker, modern science many generations to 
build up. Science has all along had to combat such 
wresting of its more obscure and unexplained 
facts into alliance with the ends of practical 
quackery, fraud, and superstition ; and psycholo- 
gists need just now to be especially alive to their 
duty of combating the forms of this alliance 
which arise when the newer results of psychology 
are so used, whether it be to supplement the in- 
adequate evidence of " thought-transference," to 



THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 121 

support the claims of spiritualism, or to justify in the 
name of " personal liberty " the substitution of a 
"healer" for the trained physician. The parent 
who allows his child to die under the care of a 
" Christian Science healer " is as much a criminal 
from neglect as the one who, going but a step 
further in precisely the same direction, brings his 
child to starvation on a diet of faith. In France 
and Russia experimenting in hypnotism on well 
persons has been restricted by law to licensed 
experts ; what, compared with that, shall we say 
to this wholly amateurish experimenting with the 
diseased? Let the "healer" heal all he can, but 
let him not experiment to the extremity of life 
and death with the credulity and superstition of 
the people who think one " doctor " is as good as 
another. 

Second, many experts agree that diseases of the 
mind, whatever their brain seat may be, all in- 
volve impairment of the Attention. This, at any 
rate, is a general mark of a deranged or defective 
mind. The idiot lacks power of attention. The 
maniac lacks control of his attention. The de- 
luded lacks grasp and flexibility of attention. 
The crank can only attend to one thing. The old 
man is feeble in the attention, having lost his 
hold. So it goes. The attention is the instru- 
ment of the one sort of normal mental activity 
called Apperception, and so impairment of the 
attention shows itself at once in some particular 
form of defect. 

Third, it is interesting to know that in pro- 
gressive mental failure the loss of the powers of 
the mind takes place in an order which is the re- 
verse of that of their original acquisition. The 
most complex functions, which are acquired last, 



122 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

are the first to show impairment. In cases of 
general degeneration, softening of the brain, etc., 
the intelligence and moral nature are first affected, 
then memory, association, and acquired actions of 
all sorts, while there remain, latest of all, actions 
of the imitative kind, most of the deep-set habits, 
and the instinctive, reflex, and automatic functions, 
This last condition is seen in the wretched victim 
of dementia and in the congenital idiot. The 
latter has, in addition to his life processes and in- 
stincts, little more than the capacity for parrot- 
like imitation. By this he acquires the very few 
items of his education. 

The recovery of the patient shows the same 
stages again, but in the reversed direction ; he 
pursues the order of the original acquisition, a 
process which physicians call Re evolution. 



CHAPTER VI. 

HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND EXPERI- 
MENTAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

In recent years the growth of the method of 
experimenting with bodies in laboratories in 
the different sciences has served to raise the 
question whether the mind may not be experi- 
mented with also. This question has been solved 
in so far that psychologists produce artificial 
changes in the stimulations to the senses and in 
the arrangements of the objects and conditions 
existing about a person, and so secure changes 
also in his mental states. What we have seen of 
Physiological Psychology illustrates this general 



HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 123 

way of proceeding, for in such studies, changes in 
the physiological processes, as in breathing, etc., 
are considered as causing changes in the mind. 
In Experimental Psychology, however, as distin- 
guished from Physiological Psychology, we agree 
to take only those influences which are outside the 
body, such as light, sound, temperature, etc., 
keeping the subject as normal as possible in all 
respects. 

A great many laboratories have now been es- 
tablished in connection with the universities in 
Germany, France, and the United States. They 
differ very much from one another, but their com- 
mon purpose is so to experiment upon the mind, 
through changes in the stimulations to which the 
individual is subjected, that tests may be made of 
his sensations, his ability to remember, the exact- 
ness and kind of movements, etc. 

The working of these laboratories and the sort 
of research carried out in them may be illustrated 
best, perhaps, by a description of some of the 
results, apparatus, methods, etc., employed in my 
own laboratory during the past year. The end in 
view will, I trust, be considered sufficient justifica- 
tion for the degree of personal reference which 
this occasions ; since greater concreteness and 
reality attach to definite descriptions such as this. 
The other laboratories, as those at Harvard and 
Columbia Universities, take up similar problems by 
similar methods. I shall therefore go on to describe 
some recent work in the Princeton laboratory. 

Of the problems taken up in the laboratory, 
certain ones may be selected for somewhat de- 
tailed explanation, since they are from widely dif- 
ferent spheres and illustrate different methods of 
procedure. 



124 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

I. Experiuients on the Temperaim-e Sense. — For a 
score of years it has been suspected that we have 
a distinct sense, with a nerve apparatus of its own, 
for the feeling of different temperatures on the 
skin. Certain investigators found that this was 
probably true ; it is proved by the fact that certain 
drugs alter the sensibility of the skin to hot and 
cold stimulations. 

Another advance was made when it was found 
that sensations of either hot or cold may be had 
from regions which are insensible at the same 
time to the other sort of stimulation, cold or hot. 
Certain minute points were discovered which re- 
port cold when touched with a cold point, but give 
no feeling from a hot object ; while other points 
would respond only with a sensation from heat, 
never giving cold. It was concluded that we have 
two temperature senses, one for hot and the other 
for cold. 

Taking the problem at this point, Mr. C* 
wished to define more closely the relation of the 
two sorts of sensation to each other, and thought 
he could do so by a method by which he might 
repeat the stimulation of a series of exact spots, 
very minute points on the skin, over and over 
again, thus securing a number of records of 
the results for both hot and cold over a given 
area. He chose an area of skin on the forearm, 
shaved it carefully, and proceeded to explore it 
with the smallest points of metals which could be 
draw^n along the skin without pricking or tearing. 
These points were attached to metallic cylinders, 
and around the cylinders rubber bands were 
placed ; the cylinders were then thrust in hot or 

* Mr. J. F. Crawford, graduate student. 



HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 1 25 

cold water kept at certain regular temperatures, 
and lifted by the rubber bands. They were placed 
point down, with equal pressure, upon the points 
of the skin in the area chosen. In this way, points 
which responded only to hot, and also those re- 
sponding only to cold, were found, marked with 
delicate ink marks in each case, until the whole 
area was explored and marked in different colours. 
This had often been done before. It remained 
to devise a way of keeping these records, so that 
the markings might all be removed from the skin, 
and new explorations made over the same surface. 
This was necessary in order to see whether the 
results secured were always the same. The theory 
that there were certain nervous endings in the 
skin corresponding to the little points required 
that each spot should be in exactly the same place 
whenever the experiment was repeated. 

Mr. C. made a number of so-called ^' trans- 
parent transfer frames." They are rectangular 
pieces of cardboard, with windows cut in them. 
The windows are covered with thin architect's 
paper, which is very transparent. This frame is 
put over the forearm in such a way that the paper 
in the window comes over the markings made on 
the arm. The markings show through very 
clearly, and the points are copied on the paper. 
Then certain boundary marks at the corners are 
made, both on the paper and on the arm, at ex- 
actly the same places, the frame is removed, and 
all the markings on the arm are erased except the 
boundary points. The result is that at any time 
the frames can be put over the arm again by 
matching the boundary points, and then the origi- 
nal temperature spots on the skin will be shown 
by the markings on the paper window. 



126 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

Proceeding to repeat the exploration of the 
same area in this way, Mr. C. makes records of 
many groupings of points for both hot and cold 
sensations on the same area; he then puts the 
frames one upon another, holds them up before a 
window so that they have a bright background, 
and is thus able to see at a glance how nearly the 
results of the different sittings correspond. 

His results, put very briefly, fail to confirm the 
theory that the sense of temperature has an appa- 
ratus of fixed spots for heat and other fixed spots 
for cold. For when he puts the different markings 
for heat together he finds that the spots are not 
the same, but that those of one frame- fall between 
those of another, and if several are put together 
the points fill up a greater or smaller area. The 
same for the cold spots; they fill a continuous 
area. He finds, however, as other investigators 
have found, that the heat areas are generally in 
large measure separate from the cold areas, only 
to a certain extent overlapping here and there, 
and also that there are regions of the skin where 
we have very little sense of either sort of tem- 
perature. 

The general results will show, therefore, if they 
should be confirmed by other investigators, that 
our temperature sense is located in what might be 
called somewhat large blotches on the skin, and 
not in minute spots; while the evidence still re- 
mains good, however, to show that we have two 
senses for temperature, one for cold and the other 
for hot. 

II. Reaction -Time Experiments. — Work in so- 
called "reaction times" constitutes one of the 
most important and well-developed chapters in ex- 
perimental psychology. In brief, the experiment 



HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 127 

involved is tliis : To find how long it takes a per- 
son to receive a sense impression of any kind — far 
example, to hear a sound-signal — and to move his 
hand or other member in response to the impres- 
sion. A simple arrangement is as follows: Sit the 
subject comfortably, tap a bell in such a way that 
the tapping also makes an electric current and 
starts a clock, and instruct the subject to press a 
button with his finger as soon as possible after he 
hears the bell. The pressing of the button by him 
breaks the current and stops the clock. The dial 
of the clock indicates the actual time which has 
elapsed between the bell (signal) and his response 
with his finger (reaction). The clock used for 
exact work is likely to be the Hipp chronoscope, 
which gives on its dials indications of time inter- 
vals in thousandths of a second. For the sake of 
keeping the conditions constant and preventing 
disturbance, the wires are made long, so that the 
clock and the experimenter may be in one room, 
while the bell, the punch key, and the subject are 
in another, with the door closed. This method of 
getting reaction times has been in use for a num- 
ber of years, especially by the astronomers who 
need to know, in making their observations, how 
much time is taken by the observer in recording a 
transit or other observation. It is part of the as- 
tronomer's "personal equation." 

Proceeding with this '' simple-reaction " experi- 
ment as a basis, the psychologists have varied the 
instructions to the subject so as to secure from 
him the different times which he takes for more 
complicated mental processes, such as distinguish- 
ing between two or more impressions, counting, 
multiplying, dividing, etc., before reacting; or they 
have him wait for an associated idea to come up 



128 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

before giving his response, with many other varia- 
tions. By comparing these different times among 
themselves, interesting results are reached con- 
cerning the mental processes involved and also 
about the differences of different individuals in the 
simpler operations of their daily lives. The fol- 
lowing research carried out by Mr. B.* serves to 
illustrate both of these assertions. 

Mr. B. wished to inquire further into a fact 
found out by several persons by this method: the 
fact that there is an important difference in the 
length of a person's reaction time according to 
the direction of his attention during the experi- 
ment. If, for example, Mr. X. be tested, it is pos- 
sible that he may prefer to attend strictly to the 
signal, letting his finger push the key without direct 
care and supervision. If this be true, and we then 
interfere with his way of proceeding, by telling him 
that he must attend to his finger, and allow the 
signal to take care of itself, we find that he has 
great difficulty in doing so, grows em.barrassed, 
and his reaction time becomes very irregular and 
much longer. Yet another person, say Y, may 
show just the opposite state of things; he finds it 
easier to pay attention to his hand, and when he 
does so he gets shorter and also more regular 
times than when he attends to the signal-sound. 

It occurred to Mr. B. that the striking differ- 
ences given by different persons in this matter of 
the most favourable direction of the attention 
might be connected with the facts brought out by 
the physiological psychologists in connection 
with speech; namely, that one person is a '^ vis- 
ual," in speaking, using mainly sight images of 

* The writer. 



HOW WE EXPERLMENT ON THE MIND. 129 

words, while another is a '* motor," using mainly 
muscular images, and yet another an " auditive," 
using mainly sound images. If the differences 
are so marked in the matter of speech, it seemed 
likely that they might also extend to other func- 
tions, and the so-called " type " of a person in his 
speech might show itself in the relative lengths 
of his reaction times according as he attended to 
one class of images or another. 

Calling this the ^' type theory " of reaction 
times, and setting about testing four different 
persons in the laboratory, the problem was di- 
vided into two parts ; first, to direct all the indi- 
viduals selected to find out, by examining their 
mental preferences in speaking, reading, writing, 
dreaming, etc., the class of images which they or- 
dinarily depended most upon ; and then to see 
by a series of experiments whether their reac- 
tion times to these particular classes of im- 
ages were shorter than to others, and especially 
whether the times were shorter when attention 
was given to these images than when it was given 
to the muscles used in the reactions. The mean- 
ing of this would be that if the reaction should be 
shorter to these images than to the correspond- 
ing muscle images, or to the other classes of images, 
then the reaction time of an individual would 
show his mental type and be of use in testing it. 
This would be a very important matter if it should 
hold, seeing that many questions both in medicine 
and in education, which involve the ascertaining 
of the mental character of the individual person, 
would profit by such an exact method. 

The results on all the subjects confirmed the 
supposition. For example, one of them, Mr. C, 
found from an independent examination of him- 



130 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

self, most carefully made, that he depended very 
largely upon his hearing in all the functions 
mentioned. When he thought of words, he re- 
membered how they sounded ; when he dreamed, 
his dreams were full of conversation and other 
sounds. When he wrote, he thought continually 
of the way the words and sentences would sound 
if spoken. Without knowing of this, many series 
of reaction experiments were made on him; the 
result showed a remarkable difference between 
the lengths of his reactions, according as he di- 
rected his attention to the sound or to his hand; 
a difference showing his time to be one half 
shorter when he paid attention tp the sound. The 
same was seen when he reacted to lights ; the 
attention went preferably to the light, not to the 
hand; but the difference was less than in the case 
of sounds. So it was an unmistakable fact in his 
case that the results of the reaction experiments 
agreed with his independent decision as to his 
mental type. 

In none of the cases did this correspondence 
fail, although all were not so pronounced in their 
type preferences as was Mr. C. 

The second part of the research had in view 
the question whether reaction times taken upon 
speech would show the same thing ; that is, 
whether in Mr. C.'s case, for example, it would 
be found that his reaction made by speaking, as 
soon as he heard the signal or saw the light, would 
be shorter when he paid attention to the signal 
than when he gave attention to his mouth and 
lips. For this purpose a mouth key was used 
which made it possible for the subject simply by 
emitting a puff of breath from the lips, to break 
an electric current and thus stop the chronoscope 



HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 13 1 

as soon as possible after hearing the signal. The 
mouth key is figured herewith (Fig. 6). 

This experiment was also carried out on all 
the subjects, none of them having any knowledge 
of the end in view, and the experimenters also not 
having, as yet, worked out the results of the ear- 
lier research. In all the cases, again, the results 




Fig. 6.— Mouth-key (Isometric drawing). The metallic tongue E 
swings over the mercury H, making or breaking the circuit 
A H E D B or C E H A. The tongue is moved by a puff of 
air through the funnel F. (Devised by Prof. W. Libbey.) 

showed that, for speech, the same thing held as 
for the hand— namely, that the shortest reaction 
times were secured when the subject paid atten- 
tion to the class of images for which he had a 
general preference. In Mr. C.'s case, for example, 
it was found that the time it took him to speak 
was much shorter when he paid strict attention to 



132 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

the expected sound than when he attended to his 
vocal organs. So for the other cases. If the 
individual's general preference is for muscular 
images, we find that the quickest time is made 
when attention is given to the mouth and lips. 
Such is the case with Mr. B. 

The general results go to show, therefore — and 
four cases showing no exception, added to the 
indications found by other writers, make a gen- 
eral conclusion very probable — that in the differ- 
ences in reaction times, as secured by giving the 
attention this way or that, we have general indi- 
cations of the individual's temperament, or at least 
of his mental preferences as set by his education. 
These indications agree with those found in the 
cases of aphasia known as "motor," *' visual," 
"auditory," etc., already mentioned. The early 
examination of children by this method would 
probably be of great service in determining prop- 
er courses of treatment, subjects of study, modes 
of discipline, tendencies to fatigue and embar- 
rassment, and the direction of best progress in 
education. 

This research may be taken to illustrate the 
use of the reaction-time method in investiga- 
ting such complex processes as attention, tem- 
perament, etc. The department which includes 
the various time measurements in psychology is 
now called Mental Chronometry, the older term, 
Psychometry, being less used on account of its 
ambiguity. 

III. An Optical Illusion.— li-i the sphere of vi- 
sion many very interesting facts are constantly 
coming to light. Sight is the most complex of 
the senses, the most easily deranged, and, withal, 
the most necessary to our normal existence. The 



« 



HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 133 

report of the following experimental study will 
have the greater utility, since, apart from any in- 
trinsic novelty or importance the results may 
prove to have, it shows some of the general bear- 
ings of the facts of vision in relation to yEsthetics, 
to the theory of Illusions, and to the function of 
Judgment. 

Illusion of the senses is due either to purely 
physiological causes or to the operation of the 
principle of Assimilation, which has already been 
remarked upon. In the latter case it illustrates 
the fact that at any time there is a general dis- 
position of the mind to look upon a thing under 
certain forms, patterns, etc., to which it has grown 
accustomed ; and to do this it is led sometimes to 
distort what it sees or hears unconsciously to 
itself. So it falls into errors of judgment through 
the trap which is set by its own manner of work- 
ing. Nowhere is the matter better illustrated than 
in the sphere of vision. The number of illusions 
of vision is remarkable. We are constantly tak- 
ing shapes and forms for something slightly differ- 
ent from what, by measurement, we actually find 
them to be. And psychologists are attempting — • 
with rather poor success so far — to find some 
general principles of the mechanism of vision 
which will account for the great variety of its illu- 
sions. 

Among these principles one is known as Con- 
trast. It is hardly a principle as yet. It is rather 
a word used to cover all illusions which spring up 
when surfaces of different sizes and shapes, looked 
at together or successively, are misjudged with 
reference to one another. Wishing to investigate 
this in a simple way, the following experiment was 
planned and carried out by Mr. B. 



134 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

He wished to find out whether, if two detached 
surfaces of different sizes be gazed at together, the 
linear distances of the field of vision (the whole 
scene visible at once) would be at all misjudged. 
To test this, he put in the window (W) * of the 
dark room a filling of white cardboard in which 
two square holes had been cut (S S'). The sides of 
the squares were of certain very unequal lengths. 
Then a slit was made between the middle points of 
the sides of the squares next to each other, so that 
there was a narrow path or trough joining the 
squares between their adjacent sides. Inside the 
dark room he arranged a bright light so that it 
would illuminate this trough, but not be seen by a 
person seated some distance in front of the win- 
dow in the next room. A needle (D) was hung on 
a pivot behind the cardboard, so that its point 
could move along the bright trough in either di- 
rection ; and on the needle was put the armature 
(A) of an electro-magnet which, when a current 
passed, would be drawn instantly to the magnet 
(E), and so stop the needle exactly at the point 
which it had then reached. A clock motor (Cm) 
w^as arranged in such a way as to carry the needle 
back and forth regularly over the slit ; and the 
electro-magnet was connected b)^ wires with a 
punch key (K) on a table beside the subject in 
the next room. All being now ready, the subject, 
Mr. S., is told to watch the needle which appears 
as a bead of light travelling along the slit, and 
stop it when it comes to the middle point of the 
line, by pressing the electric key. The experi- 
menter, who stands behind the window in the dark 
room, reads on a scale (mm.) marked in millime- 

^ This and the following letters in parentheses refer to Fig. 7 



HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 135 

tres the exact point at which the needle stops, re- 
leases the needle by breaking the current, thus 




allowing it to return slowly over the line again. 
This gives the subject another opportunity to 
10 



136 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

stop it at what he judges to be the exact middle 
of the line, and so on. The accompanying figure 
(Fig. 7) shows the entire arrangement. 

A great many experiments performed in this 
way, with the squares set both vertically and 
horizontally, and with several persons, brought a 
striking and very uniform result. The point 
selected by the subject as the middle is regu- 
larly too far toward the smaller square. Not a 
little, indeed, but a very appreciable amount. 
The amount of the displacement, or, roughly 
speaking, of the illusion, increases as the larger 
square is made larger and the smaller one 
smaller ; or, put in a sentence, the amount varies 
directly with the ratio of the smaller to the larger 
square side. 

Finding such an unmistakable illusion by this 
method, Mr. B, thought that if it could be tested 
by an appeal to people generally, it would be of 
great gain. It occurred to him that the way to 
do this would be to reverse the conditions of the 
experiment in the following way : He prepared 
the figures given in Plate I, in which the two 
squares are made of suitable relative size, a line 
is drawn between them, and a point on the line 
is plainly marked. This he had printed in a 
weekly journal, and asked the readers of the 
journal to get their friends, after merely looking 
at the figure (i. e., without knowing the result to 
be expected), to say — as the reader may now do 
before reading further — whether the point on the 
line (Plate 1) is in the middle or not; and if not, 
in which direction from the true middle it lies. 
The results from hundreds of persons of all man- 
ner of occupations, ages, and of both sexes, agree 
in saying that the point lies too far toward the 



o 




HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 137 

larger square. In reality it is in the exact middle. 
This is just the opposite of the result of the ex- 
periments in the laboratory, where the conditions 
were the reverse, i. e., to find the middle as it ap- 
pears to the eye. Here, therefore, we have a com- 
plete confirmation of the illusion ; and it is now 
fully established that in all cases in which the 
conditions of this experiment are realized we 
make a constant mistake in estimating distances 
by the eye.* 

For instance, if a town committee wish to erect 
a statue to their local hero in the public square, 
and if on two opposite sides of the square there 
are buildings of very different heights, the statue 
should not be put in the exact middle of the 
square, if it is to give the best effect from a dis- 
tance. It should be placed a little toward the 
smaller building. A colleague of the writer found, 
when this was first made public, that the pictures 
in his house had actually been hung in such away 
as to allow for this illusion. Whenever a picture 
was to be put up between two others of considera- 
ble difference of size, or between a door (large) and 
a window (small), it had actually been hung a lit- 
tle nearer to the smaller — toward the small pic- 
ture or toward the window — and not in the true 
middle. 

It is probable that interesting applications of 
this illusion may be discovered in aesthetics. For 
wherever in drawing or painting it is wished to 
indicate to the observer that a point is midway 

* In redrawing the figure on a larger sheet (which is rec- 
ommended), the connecting line may be omitted, only the 
mid-point being marked. Some get a better effect with two 
circles, the intervening distance being divided midway by a 
dot, as in Plate 11. 



138 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

between two lines of different lengths, we should 
find that the artist, in order to produce this effect 
most adequately, deviates a little from the true 
middle. So in architecture, the effect of a con- 
trast of masses often depends upon the sense 
of bilateral balance, symmetry, or equality, in 
which this visual error would naturally come into 
play. Indeed, it is only necessary to recall to mind 
that one of the principal laws of aesthetic effect 
in the matter of right line proportion is the rela- 
tion of " one to one," as it is called, or equal divi- 
sion, to see the wide sphere of application of this 
illusion. In all such cases the mistake of judg- 
ment would have to be allowed for if masses of 
unequal size lie at the ends of the line which is to 
be divided. 

IV. The Accuracy of Memory. — Another in- 
vestigation may be cited to illustrate quite a dif- 
ferent department. It aimed to find out some- 
thing about the rate at which memory fades with 
the lapse of time. Messrs. W., S., and B.* began 
by formulating the different ways in which tests 
may be made on individuals to see how accurate 
their memories are after different periods of time. 
They found that three different tests might be 
employed, and called them "methods" of investi- 
gating memory. These are, first, the method of 
Reproduction. The individual is asked to re- 
produce, as in an oral or written examination, what 
he remembers of something told him a certain 
time before. This is the ordinary method of the 
schools and colleges, of civil-service examina- 
tions, etc. Second, the method of Identifica- 
tion, which calls upon the person to identify a 

* Prof. H. C. Warren, Mr. W. J. Shaw, and the writer. 



HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 139 

thing, sentence, report, etc., a second or third 
time, as being the same in all respects as that 
which he experienced the first time it appeared. 
Third, the method of Selection, in which we 
show to the person a number of things, sentences, 
reports, descriptions of objects, etc., and require 
him to select from them the ones which are 
exactly the same as those he has had before. 
These methods will be better understood from 
the account now to be given of the way they 
were carried out on a large number of students. 

The first experiments were made by Messrs. S. 
and B. in the University of Toronto on a class of 
students numbering nearly three hundred, of 
whom about one third were women. The in- 
structors showed to the class certain squares of 
cardboard of suitable size, and asked them to 
do the following three things on different days: 
First, to reproduce from memory, with pencil on 
paper, squares of the same size as those shown, 
after intervals of one, ten, twenty, and forty 
minutes (this gives results by the method of 
Reproduction) ; second, to say whether a new set 
of squares, which were shown to them after 
the same intervals, were the same in size as 
those which they had originally seen, smaller, or 
larger (illustrating the method of Identification) ; 
third, they were shown a number of squares of 
slightly different sizes, again at the same inter- 
vals, and asked to select from them the ones 
which they found to be the same size as those ori- 
ginally seen (method of Selection). 

The results from all these experiments were 
combined with those of another series, secured 
from a large class of Princeton students; and the 
figure (Fig. 8) shows by curves something of the 



140 



THE STORY OF THE MIND. 



result. The figure is given in order that the read- 
er may understand by its explanation the " graphic 
method " of plotting statistical results, which, with 
various complications, is now employed in psy- 
chology as well as in the other positive sciences. 




-Memoiy curves : I. Method of Selection. 
Identification. 



Briefly described in words, it was found that 
the three methods agreed (the curves are paral- 
lel)* in showing that during the first ten minutes 
there was a great falling off in the accuracy of 
memory (slant in the curves from o to 10) ; that 
then, between ten and twenty minutes, memory re- 
mained relatively faithful (the curves are nearly 
level from 10 to 20), and that a rapid falling off 
in accuracy occurred after twenty minutes (shown 
by the slant in the lines from 20 to 40). 

Further, the different positions of the curves 
show certain things when properly understood. 
The curve secured by the method of Reproduction 
(not given in the figure) shows results which are 
least accurate, because most variable. The rea- 
son of this is that in drawing the squares to re- 
produce the one remembered, the student is in- 



* This figure shows curves for two of the methods only, 
Selection and Identification. 



HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 141 

fluenced by the size of the paper he uses, by the 
varying accuracy of his control over his hand and 
arm (the results vary, for example, according as 
he uses his right or left hand), and by all sorts of 
associations with square objects which may at the 
time be in his mind. In short, this method gives 
his memory of the square a chance to be fully 
assimilated to his current mental state during the 
interval, and there is no corrective outside of him 
to keep him true. 

That this difficulty is a real one no one who 
has examined students will be disposed to deny. 
When we ask them to reproduce what the text- 
book or the professor's lectures have taught, we 
also ask them to express themselves accurately. 
Now the science of correct expression is a thing 
in which the average student has had no training. 
With his difficulty in remembering is connected 
his difficulty of expression ; and with it all goes a 
certain embarrassment, due to responsibilty, per- 
sonal fear, and dread of disgrace. So the results 
finally obtained by this method are really very 
complex. 

One of the curves, that given by the method of 
Selection (I), also shows memory to be inter- 
fered with by a certain influence. We saw in con- 
nection with the experiments reported above that, 
even in the most elementary arrangements of 
squares in the visual fields, an element of contrast 
comes in to interfere with our judgment of size. 
This we find confirmed in these experiments when 
the method of Selection is used. By this method 
we show a number of squares side by side, asking 
the individual to select the one he saw before. 
All the squares, being shown at once, come into 
contrast with one another on the background ; and 



142 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

SO his judgment of the size of the one he remembers 
is distorted. This, again, is a real influence in our 
mental lives, leading to actual illusion. An un- 
scrupulous lawyer may gradually modify the story 
which his client or a witness tells by constantly 
adding to what is really remembered, other details 
so expertly contrasted with the facts, or so neatly 
interposed among them, that the witness gradually 
incorporates them in his memory and so testifies 
more nearly as the lawyer desires. In our daily 
lives another element of contrast is also very 
strong — that due to social opinion. We constantly 
modify our memories to agree more closely with 
the truths of social belief, paring down uncon- 
sciously the difference between our own and oth- 
ers' reports of things. If several witnesses of an 
event be allowed to compare notes from time to 
time, they will gradually come to tell more nearly 
the same story. 

The other curve (II) in the figure, that secured 
by the method of Identification, seemed to the 
investigators to be the most accurate. It is not 
subject to the errors due to expression and to 
contrast, and it has the advantage of allowing the 
subject the right to recognise the square. It is 
shown to him again, with no information that it is 
the same, and he decides whether from his remem- 
brance of the earlier one, it is the same or not. 
The only objection to this method is that it re- 
quires a great many experiments in order to get 
an average result. To be reliable, an average 
must be secured, seeing that, for one or two or a 
few trials, the student may guess right without 
remembering the original square at all. By taking 
a large number of persons, such as the three hun- 
dred students, this objection may be overcome. 



HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 143 

Comparing the averages, for example, of the re- 
sults given by the men and women respectively, 
we found practically no difference between them. 
This last point may serve to introduce a dis- 
tinction which is important in all work in ex- 
perimental psychology, and one which is recog- 
nised also in many other sciences — the distinction 
between results obtained respectively from one 
individual and from many. Very often the only 
way to learn truth about a single individual is to 
investigate a number together. In all large classes 
of things, especially living things, there are great 
individual differences, and in any particular case 
this personal variation may be so large that it ob- 
scures the real nature of the normal. For exam- 
ple, three large sons may be born to two small 
parents; and from this case alone it might be in- 
ferred that all small parents have large sons. Or 
three girls might have better memories than three 
boys in the same family or school, and from this 
it might be argued that girls are better endowed 
in this direction than boys. In all such cases the 
proper thing to do is to get a large number of 
cases and combine them; then the preponderance 
which the first cases examined may have shown, 
in one direction or the other, is corrected. This 
gives rise to what is called the statistical method ; 
it is used in many practical matters, such as life 
insurance, but its application to the facts of life, 
mind, variation, evolution, etc., is only begun. Its 
neglect in psychology is one of the crying defects 
of much recent work. Its use in complicated 
problems involves a mathematical training which 
people generally do not possess; and its misuse 
through lack of exactness of observation or igno- 
rance of the requirements is worse than its neglect. 



144 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

Another result came out in connection with 
these experiments on memory, which, apart from 
its practical interest, may serve to show an addi- 
tional resource of experimental psychology. In 
making up the results of a series of experiments 
it is very important to observe the way in which 
the different cases differ from one another. Some 
cases may be so nearly alike that the most extreme 
of them are not far from the average of them all ; 
as we find, for example, if we measure a thousand 
No. lo shot. But now suppose we mix in with the 
No. lo some No. 6 and some No. 14, and then take 
the average size; we may now get just the same 
average, and we can tell that this pile is different 
from the other only by observing the individual 
measurements of the single shot and setting down 
the relative frequency of each particular size. Or, 
again, we may get a different average size in one 
of two ways : either by taking another lot of uni- 
form No. 14 shot, let us say, or by mixing with the 
No. 10 a few very large bullets. Which is actually 
the case would be shown only by the examination 
of the individual cases. This is usually done by 
comparing each case with the average of the whole 
lot, and taking the average of the differences thus 
secured — a quantity called the "mean variation." 

In the case of the experiments with the squares, 
the errors in the judgments of the students were 
found to lie always in one direction. The answers 
all tended to show that they took, for the one 
originally shown, a square which was really too 
large. Casting about for the reason of this, it was 
considered necessary to explain it by the supposi- 
tion that the square remembered had in the inter- 
val become enlarged in memory. The image was 
larger when called up after ten or twenty min- 



HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 145 

utes than it was before. This might be due to a 
purely mental process; or possibly to a sort of 
spreading out of the brain process in the visual 
centre, giving the result that whenever, by the re- 
vival of the brain process, the mental image is 
brought back again to mind, this spreading out 
shows itself by an enlargement of the memory 
image. However it may be explained, the indica- 
tions of it were unmistakable — unless, of course, 
some other reason can be given for the uniform 
direction of the errors; and it is further seen in 
other experiments carried out by Messrs. W. and 
B. and by Dr. K.* at a later date. 

If this tendency to the enlargement of our 
memories with the lapse of time should be found 
to be a general law of memory, it would have in- 
teresting bearings. It would suggest, for instance, 
an explanation of the familiar fact that the scenes 
of the past seem to us, when we return to them, al- 
together too small. Our childhood home, the old 
flower garden, the height of house and trees, and 
even that of our hero uncle, all seem to the re- 
turning traveller of adult life ridiculously small. 
That we expect them to be larger may result from 
the fact that the memory images have undergone 
change in the direction of enlargement. 

V. Suggestion. — Space permits only the mention 
of another research, which, however, should not be 
altogether omitted, since it illustrates yet other 
problems and the principles of their solution. 
This is an investigation by Messrs. T. and H.,f 
which shows the remarkable influence of mental 

* Dr. F. Kennedy, demonstrator, now professor in the Uni- 
versity of Colorado (results not yet published). 

f G. A. Tawney, now professor in Beloit College, and C. W. 
Hodge, now professor in Lafayette College. 



146 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

suggestions upon certain bodily processes which 
have always been considered purely physiological. 
These investigators set out to repeat certain ex- 
periments of others which showed that if two 
points, say those of a pair of compasses, be some- 
what separated and put upon the skin, two sen- 
sations of contact come from the points. But if 
while the experiment is being performed the 
points be brought constantly nearer to each other, 
a time arrives w^hen the two are felt as only one, 
although they may be still some distance apart. 
The physiologists argued from this that there 
were minute nerve endings in the skin at least so 
far apart as the least distance at which the points 
were felt as two ; and that when the points were 
so close together that they only touched one of 
these nerve endings, only one sensation was pro- 
duced. Mr. T. had already found, working in Ger- 
many, that, with practice, the skin gradually be- 
came more and more able to discriminate the two 
points — that is, to feel the two at smaller distances; 
and, further, that the exercise of the skin in this 
way on one side of the body not only made that 
locality more sensitive to minute differences, but 
had the same effect, singularly, on the correspond- 
ing place on the other side of the body. This, 
our experimenters inferred, could only be due to 
the continued suggestion in the mind of the sub- 
ject that he should feel two points, the result 
being an actual heightening of the sensibility of 
the skin. When he thought that he was becoming 
more sensitive on one side — and really was — this 
sense or belief of his took effect in some way in 
both hemispheres of his brain, and so both sides 
of the body were alike affected. 

This led to other experiments in Princeton in 



HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 147 

which suggestions were actually made to the sub- 
jects that they were to become more or less sensi- 
tive to distance and direction between the points 
on the skin, with the striking result that these 
suggestions actually took effect all over the body. 
This was so accurately determined that from the 
results of the experiments with the compasses on 
the skin in this case or that, pretty accurate in- 
ferences could be made as to what mental sugges- 
tions the subject was getting at the time. There 
was no chance for deception in the results, for 
the experiments were so controlled that the sub- 
ject did not know until afterward of the corre- 
spondences actually reached between his states of 
mind and the variations in sensibility of the skin. 

This slight report of the work done in one la.b- 
oratory in about two sessions, involving a con- 
siderable variety of topics, may give an idea, so 
far as it goes, of the sort of work which experi- 
mental psychology is setting itself to do. It will 
be seen that there is as yet no well-knit body of 
results on which new experiments may proceed, 
and no developed set of experimental arrange- 
ments, such as other positive sciences show. The 
procedure is, in many important matters, still a 
matter of the individual worker's judgment and 
ability. Even for the demonstrations attempted 
for undergraduate students, good and cheap ap- 
paratus is still lacking. For these reasons it is 
premature as yet to expect that this branch of the 
science will cut much of a figure in ^education. 
There can be no doubt, however, that it is making 
many interesting contributions to our knowledge 
of the mind, and that when it is more adequately 
organized and developed in its methods and ap- 



148 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

paratus, it v/ill become the basis of discipline of a 
certain kind lying between that of physical sci- 
ence and that of the humanities, since it will have 
features in common with the biological and nat- 
ural sciences. Its results may be expected also 
to lead to better results than we now have in the 
theory and practice of education. 



CHAPTER VII. 

SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS — HYP- 
NOTISM. 

In an earlier place certain illustrations of 
Suggestion have been given. By Suggestion we 
mean the fact that all sorts of hints from with- 
out disturb and modify the beliefs and actions 
of the individual. Certain cases from my own ob- 
servation may be given which will make the mat- 
ter clear. 

Physiological Suggestion. — Observation of an 
infant for the first month or six weeks after 
birth leads to the conviction that his life is 
mainly physiological. When the actions which 
are purely reflex, together with certain random 
impul&ive movements, are noted, we seem to ex- 
haust the case. 

Yet even at this remarkably early stage H. 
was found to be in some degree receptive to 
certain Suggestions conveyed by repeated stimu- 
lation under uniform conditions. In the first 
place, the suggestions of sleep began to tell upon 
her before the end of the first month. Her nurse 
put her to sleep by laying her face down and 
patting geritly upon the end of her spine. This 



SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 149 

position soon became itself not only suggestive 
to the child of sleep, but sometimes necessary to 
sleep, even when she was laid across the nurse's 
lap in what seemed to be an uncomfortable posi- 
tion. 

This case illustrates what may be called Physi- 
ological Suggestion. It shows the law of physio- 
logical habit as it borders on the conscious. 

The same sort of phenomena appear also in 
adult life. Positions given to the limbs of a 
sleeper lead to movements ordinarily associated 
with these positions. The sleeper defends him- 
self, withdraws himself from cold, etc. Children 
learn gradually to react upon conditions of posi- 
tion, lack of support, etc., of the body, with 
those actions necessary to keep from falling, 
which adults have so perfectly. All secondary 
automatic reactions may be classed here ; the 
sensations coming from one action, as in walk- 
ing, being suggestions to the next movement, un- 
consciously acted upon. The consciousness at 
any stage in the chain of movements, if present 
at all, must be similar to the baby's in the case 
above — a mere internal glimmering. The most 
we can say of such physiological suggestion is, 
that there is probably some consciousness, and 
that the ordinary reflexes seem to be abbreviated 
and improved. 

Subconscious Adult Suggestion. — There are cer- 
tain phenomena of a rather striking kind coming 
under this head whose classification is so evident 
that we may enumerate them without discussion 
of the general principles which they involve. 

Time Suggestion. — It has been pointed out re- 
cently that dream states are largely indebted for 
their visual elements — what we see in our dreams 
II 



150 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

— to accidental lines, patches, etc., in the field of 
vision when the eyes are shut, due to the dis- 
tended blood vessels of the cornea and lids, to 
changes in the external illumination, to the pres- 
ence of dust particles of different configuration, 
etc. The other senses also undoubtedly con- 
tribute to the texture of our dreams by equally 
subconscious suggestions. There is no doubt, 
further, that our waking life is constantly influ- 
enced by such trivial stimulations. 

I have tested in detail, for example, the con- 
ditions of the rise of so-called "internal tunes" 
— we speak of " tunes in our head " or " in our 
ears" — and find certain suggestive influences 
which in most cases cause these tunes to rise and 
take their course. Often, when a tune springs 
up " in my head," the same tune has been lately 
sung or whistled in my hearing, though quite un- 
noticed at the time. Often the tunes are those 
heard in church the previous day or earlier. 
Such a tune I am entirely unable to recall volun- 
tarily ; yet when it comes into the mind's ear, so 
to speak, I readily recognise it as belonging to 
an earlier day's experience. Other cases show 
various accidental suggestions, such as the tune 
Mozart suggested by the composer's name, the 
tune Gentle Annie suggested by the name Annie, 
etc. In all these cases it is only after the tune 
has taken possession of consciousness and after 
much seeking that the suggesting influence is 
discovered. 

Closer analysis reveals certain additional facts : 
The " time " of such internal tunes is usually dic- 
tated by some rhythmical subconscious occur- 
rence. After hearty meals it is always the time 
of the heart beat, unless there be "in the air" 



SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 151 

some more impressive stimulus; as, for example, 
when on shipboard, the beat is with me invari- 
ably that of the engine throbs. When walking it 
is the rhythm of the footfall. On one occasion a 
knock of four beats on the door started the Mar- 
seillaise in my ear; following up this clew, I 
found that at any time different-divisions of musical 
time being struck on the table at will by another 
person, tunes would spring up and run on, getting 
their cue from the measures suggested. Further, 
when a tune dies away, its last notes often sug- 
gest, some time after, another having a similar 
movement — just as we pass from one tune to 
another in a " medley." It may also be noted 
that in my case the tune memories are auditive: 
they run in my head when I have no words for 
them and have never sung them — an experience 
which is consistent with the fact that these " in- 
ternal tunes" arise in childhood before the fac- 
ulty of speech. They also have distinct pitch. 
For example, I once found a tune " in my head " 
which was perfectly familiar, but for which I 
could find no words. Tested on the piano, 
the pitch was F-sharp and the time was my 
heart beat. Finally, after much effort, I got 
the unworthy words "Wait till the clouds roll 
by " by humming the tune over repeatedly. The 
pitch is determined probably by the accidental 
condition of the auditory centre in the brain or 
by the pitch of the external sound which serves 
as stimulus to the tune. 

Normal Auto-Suggestion. — A further class of 
Suggestions, which fall under the general phrase 
Auto-suggestion, or Self-suggestion of a normal 
type, may be illustrated. In experimenting upon 
the possibility of suggesting sleep to another I 



152 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

have found certain strong reactive influences upon 
my own mental condition. Such an effort, wliich 
involves the picturing of another as asleep, is a 
strong Auto-suggestion of sleep, taking effect in 
my own case in about five minutes if the conditions 
be kept constant. The more clearly the patient's 
sleep is pictured the stronger becomes the sub- 
jective feeling of drowsiness. After about ten 
minutes the ability to give strong concentration 
seems to disintegrate, attention is renewed only 
by fits and starts and in the presence of great 
mental inertia, and the oncoming of sleep is al- 
most overpowering. An unfailing cure for in- 
somnia, speaking for myself, is the persistent ef- 
fort to put some one else asleep by hard thinking 
of the end in view, with a continued gentle move- 
ment, such as stroking the other with the hand. 

On the other hand, it is impossible to bring on 
a state of drowsiness by imagining myself asleep. 
The first effort at this, indeed, is promising, for it 
leads to a state of restfulness and ease akin to 
the mental composure which is the usual pre- 
liminary to sleep; but it goes no further. It is 
succeeded by a state of steady wakefulness, 
which effort of attention or effort not to attend 
only intensifies. If the victim of insomnia could 
only forget that he is thus afflicted, could forget 
himself altogether, his case would be more hope- 
ful. The contrast between this condition and 
that already described shows that it is the Self- 
idea, with the emotions it awakens,* which pre- 
vents the suggestion from realizing itself and 
probably accounts for many cases of insomnia. 

* A friend informs me that when he pictures himself dead 
he can not help feeling gratified that he makes so handsome a 
corpse. 



SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 153 

Sense Exaltation. — Recent discussions of Hyp- 
notism have shown the remarkable " exaltation " 
which the senses may attain in somnambulism, 
together with a corresponding refinement in the 
interpretative faculty. This is described more 
fully below. Events, etc., quite subconscious, 
usually become suggestions of direct influence 
upon the subject. Unintended gestures, habitual 
with the experimenter, may suffice to hypnotize 
his accustomed subject. The possibility of such 
training of the senses in the normal state has not 
had sufficient emphasis. The young child's subtle 
discriminations of facial and other personal indi- 
cations are remarkable. The prolonged experi- 
ence of putting H. to sleep — extending over a 
period of more than six months, during which I 
slept beside her bed — served to make me alive to 
a certain class of suggestions otherwise quite be- 
yond notice. It is well known that mothers are 
awake to the needs of their infants when they are 
asleep to everything else. 

In the first place, we may note the intense 
auto-suggestion of sleep already pointed out, 
under the stimulus of repeated nursery rhymes 
or other regular devices regularly resorted to 
in putting the child asleep. Second, surprising 
progressive exaltation of the hearing and inter- 
pretation of sounds coming from her in a dark 
room. At the end of four or five months, her 
movements in bed awoke me or not according as 
she herself was awake or not. Frequently after 
awaking I was distinctly aware of what move- 
ments of hers had awaked me.* A movement of 

* This fact is analogous to our common experience of being 
awaked by a loud noise and then hearing it after we awake ; 
yet the explanation is not the same. 



154 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

her head by which it was held up from the pillow 
was readily distinguished from the restless move- 
ments of her sleep. It was not so much, there- 
fore, exaltation of hearing as exaltation of the 
function of the recognition of sounds heard and 
of their discrimination. 

Again, the same phenomenon to an equally 
marked degree attended the sound of her breath- 
ing. It is well enough known that the smallest 
functional bodily changes induce changes in both 
the rapidity and the quality of the respiration. 
In sleep the muscles of inhalation and exhalation 
are relaxed, inhalation becomes long and deep, 
exhalation short and exhaustive, and the rhythmic 
intervals of respiration much lengthened. Now 
degrees of relative wakefulness are indicated with 
surprising delicacy by the slight respiration 
sounds given forth by the sleeper. Professional 
nurses learn to interpret these indications with 
great skill. This exaltation of hearing became 
very pronounced in my operations with the child. 
After some experience the peculiar breathing of 
advancing or actual wakefulness in her was suffi- 
cient to wake me. And when awake myself the 
change in the infant's respiration sounds to those 
indicative of oncoming sleep was sufficient to sug- 
gest or bring on sleep in myself. In the dark, 
also, the general character of her breathing sounds 
was interpreted with great accuracy in terms of 
her varied needs, her comfort or discomfort, etc. 
The same kind of suggestion from the respiration 
sounds now troubles me whenever one of the chil- 
dren is sleeping within hearing distance.* 

* This is an unpleasant result which is confirmed by pro- 
fessional infants' nurses. They complain of loss of sleep when 
off duty. Mrs. James Murray, an infants' nurse in Toronto, 



SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 155 

The reactions in movement upon these sug- 
gestions are very marked and appropriate, in 
customary or habitual lines, although the stimu- 
lations are quite subconscious. The clearest il- 
lustrations in this body of my experiences were 
a.fforded by my responses in crude songs to the 
infant's waking movements and breathing sounds. 
I have often waked myself by myself singing one 
of two nursery rhymes, which by endless repeti- 
tion night after night had become so habitual as 
to follow in an automatic way upon the stimulus 
from the child. It is certainly astonishing that 
among the things which one may get to do auto- 
matically, we should find singing ; but writers 
on the subject have claimed that the function of 
musical or semi-musical expression may be reflex. 

The principle of subconscious suggestion, of 
which these simple facts are less important illus- 
trations, has very interesting applications in the 
higher reaches of social, moral, and educational 
theory. 

Ifihibitory Suggestion. — An interesting class of 
phenomena which figure perhaps at all the levels 
of nervous action now described, may be known 
as Inhibitory Suggestions. The phrase, in its 
broadest use, refers to all cases in which the sug- 
gesting stimulus tends to suppress, check, or m- 
hibit movement. We find this in certain cases 

informs me that she finds it impossible to sleep when she has 
no infant in hearing distance, and for that reason she never 
asks for a vacation. Her normal sleep has evidently come to 
depend upon continuous soporific suggestions from a child. In 
another point, also, her experience confirms my observations, 
viz., the child's movements, preliminary to waking, awake her, 
when no other movements of the child do so — the consequence 
being that she is ready for the infant when it gets fully awake 
and cries out. 



156 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

just as strongly marked as the positive movement- 
bringing kind of suggestion. The facts may be 
put under certain heads which follow. 

Pain Suggestion. — Of course/the fact that pain 
inhibits movement occurs at once to the reader. 
So far as this is general, and is a native inherited 
thing, it is organic, and so falls under the head of 
Physiological Suggestion of a negative sort. The 
child shows contracting movements, crying move- 
ments, starting and jumping movements, shortly 
after birth, and so plainly that we need not hesi- 
tate to say that these pain responses belong pure- 
ly to his nervous system; and that, in general, 
they are inhibitory and contrary to those other 
native reactions which indicate pleasure. 

The influence of pain extends everywhere 
through mental development, however. Its gen- 
eral effect is to dampen down or suppress the 
function which brings the pain; and in this its 
action is just the contrary to that of pleasure, 
which furthers the pleasurable function. 

Control Suggestion. — This covers all cases which 
show any kind of restraint set upon the move- 
ments of the body short of that which comes from 
voluntary intention. The infant brings the move- 
ments of his legs, arms, head, etc., gradually into 
some sort of order and system. It is accom- 
plished by a system of organic checks and coun- 
ter-checks, by which associations are formed be- 
tween muscular sensations on the one hand and 
certain other sensations, as of sight, touch, hear- 
ing, etc., on the other hand. The latter serve as 
suggestions to the performance of these move- 
ments, and these alone. The infant learns to bal- 
ance his head and trunk, to direct his hands, to 
grasp with thumb opposite the four fingers — all 



SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 157 

largely by such control suggestions, aided, of 
course, by his native reflexes. 

Contrary Suggestion. — By this is meant a tend- 
ency of a very striking kind observable in many 
children, no less than in many adults, to do the 
contrary when any course is suggested. The 
very word "contrary" is used in popular talk to 
describe an individual who shows this type of 
conduct. Such a child or man is rebellious when- 
ever rebellion is possible ; he seems to kick con- 
stitutionally against the pricks. 

Tlie fact of " contrariness " in older children 
— especially boys — is so familiar to all who have 
observed school children with any care that I 
need not cite further details. And men and 
women often become so enslaved to suggestions 
of the contrary that they seem only to wait for 
indications of the wishes of others in order to op- 
pose and thwart them. 

Contrary suggestions are to be explained as 
exaggerated instances of control. It is easy to 
see that the checks and counter-checks already 
spoken of as constituting the method of controi 
of muscular movement may themselves become 
so habitual and intense as to dominate the reac- 
tions which they should only regulate. The asso- 
ciations between the muscular series and the 
visual series, let us say, which controls it, comes 
to work backward, so that the drift of the or- 
ganic processes is toward certain contrary reverse 
movements. 

In the higher reaches of conduct and life we 
find interesting cases of very refined contrary 
suggestion. In the man of ascetic temperament, 
the duty of self-denial takes the form of a regular 
contrary suggestion in opposition to every invita- 



158 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

tion to self-indulgence, however innocent. The 
over-scrupulous mind, like the over-precise, is a 
prey to the eternal remonstrances from the con- 
trary which intrude their advice into all his de- 
cisions. In matters of thought and belief also 
cases are common of stubborn opposition to evi- 
dence, and persistence in opinion, which are in no 
way due to the cogency of the contrary arguments 
or to real force of conviction. 

Hypnotic Suggestion. — The facts upon which the 
current theories of hypnotism are based may be 
summed up under a few headings, and the recital 
of them will serve to bring this class of phenomena 
into the general lines of classification drawn out 
in this chapter. 

The Facts. — When by any cause the attention 
is held fixed upon an object, say a bright button, 
for a sufficient time without distraction, the sub- 
ject begins to lose consciousness in a peculiar 
way. Generalizing this simple experiment, we 
may say that any method or device which serves 
to secure undivided and prolonged attention to 
any sort of Suggestion — be it object, idea, any- 
thing that is clear and striking — brings on what is 
called Hypnosis to a person normally constituted. 

The Paris school of interpreters find three 
stages of progress in the hypnotic sleep : First, 
Catalepsy, characterized by rigid fixity of the 
muscles in any position in which the limbs may 
be put by the experimenter, with great Suggesti- 
bility on the side of consciousness, and Angesthe- 
sia (lack of sensation) in certain areas of the skin 
and in certain of the special senses ; second. Leth- 
argy, in which consciousness seems to disappear 
entirely; the subject not being sensitive to any 
stimulations by eye, ear, skin, etc., and the body 



SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS, 159 

being flabby and pliable as in natural sleep ; third, 
Somnambulism, so called from its analogies to the 
ordinary sleep-walking condition to which many 
persons are subject. This last covers the phe- 
nomena of ordinary mesmeric exhibitions at which 
travelling mesmerists "control" persons before 
audiences and make them obey their commands. 
While other scientists properly deny that these 
three stages are really distinct, they may yet be 
taken as representing extreme instances of the 
phenomena, and serve as points of departure for 
further description. 

On the mental side the general characteristics 
of hypnotic Somnambulism are as follows: i. The 
iinpairment of memory in a peculiar way. In the 
hypnotic condition all affairs of the ordinary life 
are forgotten ; on the other hand, after waking 
the events of the hypnotic condition are forgot- 
ten. Further, in any subsequent period of Hyp- 
nosis the events of the former similar periods are 
remembered. So a person who is frequently hyp- 
notized has two continuous memories : one for 
the events of his normal life, exercised only when 
he is normal; and one for the events of his hyp- 
notic periods, exercised only when he is hypno- 
tized. 

2. Suggestibility to a remarkable degree. By 
this is meant the tendency of the subject to have 
in reality any mental condition which is sug- 
gested to him. He is subject to Suggestions 
both on the side of his sensations and ideas and 
also on the side of his actions. He will see, hear, 
remember, believe, refuse to see, hear, etc., any- 
thing, with some doubtful exceptions, which may 
be suggested to him by word or deed, or even by 
the slightest and perhaps unconscious indications 



l6o THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

of those about him. On the side of conduct his 
suggestibility is equally remarkable. Not only 
will he act in harmony with the illusions of sight, 
etc., into which he is led, but he will carry out, 
like an automaton, the actions suggested to him. 
Further, pain and pleasure, with their organic ac- 
companiments may be produced by Suggestion. 
The skin may be actually scarred with a lead pen- 
cil if the patient be told that it is red-hot iron. 
The suggested pain brings about vasomotor and 
other bodily changes that prove, as similar tests in 
the other cases prove, that simulation is impossible 
and the phenomena are real. These truths and 
those given below are no longer based on the 
mere reports of the "mesmerists," but are the 
recognised property of legitimate psychology. 

Again, such suggestions may be for a future 
time, and be performed only when a suggested 
interval has elapsed ; they are then called De- 
ferred or Post-hypnotic Suggestions. Post-hyp- 
notic Suggestions are those which include the 
command not to perform them until a certain 
time after the subject has returned to his normal 
condition; such suggestions- — if of reasonably 
trifling character — are actually carried out after- 
ward in the normal state, although the person is 
conscious of no reason why he should act in such 
a way, having no remembrance whatever that he 
has received the suggestion when hypnotized. 
Such post-hypnotic performances may be de- 
ferred by suggestion for many months. 

3. So-called Exaltation of the mental faculties, 
especially of the senses : increased acuteness of 
vision, hearing, touch, memory, and the mental 
functions generally. By reason of this great "ex- 
altation," hypnotized patients may get suggestions 



SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. l6l 

from the experimenters which are not intended, 
and discover their intentions when every effort is 
made to conceal them. Often emotional changes 
in expression are discerned by them ; and if it be 
admitted that their power of logical and imagina- 
tive insight is correspondingly exalted, there is 
hardly a limit to the patient's ability to read, sim- 
ply from physical indications, the mental states of 
those who experiment with him. 

4. So-called i?^//^;Y. This term covers all the 
facts known, before the subject was scientifically 
investigated, by such expressions as "personal 
magnetism," "will power over the subject", etc. 
It is true that one particular operator alone may 
be able to hypnotize a particular patient ; and in 
this case the patient is, when hypnotized, open to 
suggestions from that person only. He is deaf 
and blind to everything enjoined by any one else. 
It is easy to see from what has already been said 
that this does not involve any occult nerve influ- 
ence or mental power. A sensitive patient any- 
body can hypnotize, provided only that the patient 
have the idea or conviction that the experimenter 
possesses such power. Now, let a patient get 
the idea that only one man can hypnotize him, and 
that is the beginning of the hypnotic suggestion 
itself. It is a part of the suggestion that a cer- 
tain personal Rapport is necessary; so the patient 
must have this Rapport. This is shown by the fact 
that when such a patient is hypnotized, the oper- 
ator en rapport with, him can transfer the so-called 
control to any one else simply by suggesting to 
the patient that this third party can also hypno- 
tize him. Rapport, therefore, and all the' amazing 
claims of charlatans to powers of charming, steal- 
ing another's personality, controlling his will at a 



1 62 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

distance — all such claims are explained, so far as 
they have anything to rest upon, by suggestion 
under conditions of mental hypersesthesia or ex- 
altation. 

I may now add certain practical remarks on 
the subject. 

In general, any method which fixes the atten- 
tion upon a single stimulus long enough is prob- 
ably sufficient to produce Hypnosis; but the result 
is quick and profound in proportion as the patient 
has the idea that it is going to succeed, i. e., gets 
the suggestion of sleep. It may be said, there- 
fore, that the elaborate performances, such as 
passes, rubbings, mysterious incantations, etc., 
often resorted to, have no physiological effect 
whatever, and only serve to work in the way of 
suggestion upon the mind of the subject. In view 
of this it is probable that any person in normal 
health can be hypnotized, provided he is not too 
sceptical of the operator's knowledge and power ; 
and, on the contrary, any one can hypnotize an- 
other, provided he do not arouse too great scepti- 
cism, and is not himself wavering and clumsy. It 
is probable, however, that susceptibility varies 
greatly in degree, and that race exerts an impor- 
tant influence. Thus in Europe the French seem 
to be most susceptible, and the English and Scan- 
dinavians least so. The impression that weak- 
minded persons are most available is quite mis- 
taken. On the contrary, patients in the insane 
asylums, idiots, etc., are the most refractory. This 
is to be expected, from the fact that in these cases 
power of strong, steady attention is wanting. 
The only class of pathological cases which seem 
peculiarly open to the hypnotic influence is that 
of the hystero-epileptics, whose tendencies are 



SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 1 6 



toward extreme suggestibility. Further, one may 
hypnotize himself — what we have called above 
Auto-suggestion — especially after having been 
put into the trance more than once by others. 
When let alone after being hypnotized, the pa- 
tient usually passes into a normal sleep and 
wakes naturally. 

It is further evident that frequent hypnotiza- 
tion is very damaging if done by the same opera- 
tor, since then the patient contracts a habit of 
responding to the same class of suggestions; and 
this may influence his normal life. A further dan- 
ger arises from the possibility that all suggestions 
have not been removed from the patient's mind 
before his awaking. Competent scientific observ- 
ers always make it a point to do this. It is pos- 
sible also that damaging effects result directly to 
a man from frequent hypnotizing; and this is in 
some degree prol3able, simply from the fact that, 
while it lasts, the state is abnormal. Consequent- 
ly, all general exhibitions in public, as well as all 
individual hypnotizing by amateurs, should be 
prohibited by law, and the whole practical appli- 
cation as well as observation of Hypnosis should 
be left in the hands of physicians or experts whc 
have proved their fitness by an examination and 
secured a certificate of licence. In Russia a de- 
cree (summer, 1893) permits physicians to practise 
hypnotism for purposes of cure under official cer- 
tificates. In France public exhibitions are for- 
bidden. 

So-called Criminal Suggestions may be made, 
with more or less effect, in the hypnotic state. 
Cases have been tried in the French courts, in 
which evidence for and against such influence of a 
third person over the criminal has been admitted. 



164 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

The reality of the phenomenon, however, is in 
dispute. The Paris school claim that criminal 
acts may be suggested to the hypnotized subject, 
which are just as certain to be performed by him 
as any other acts. Such a subject will discharge 
a blank-loaded pistol at one, when told to do so, 
or stab him with a paper dagger. While admit- 
ting the facts, the Nancy theorists claim that the 
subject knows the performance to be a farce; 
gets suggestions of the unreality of it from the ex- 
perimenters, and so acquiesces. This is probably 
true, as is seen in frequent cases in which patients 
have refused, in hypnotic sleep, to perform sug- 
gested acts which shocked their modesty, veracity, 
etc. This goes to show that the Nancy school are 
right in saying that while in Hypnosis suggesti- 
bility is exaggerated to an enormous degree, still 
it has limits in the more well-knit habits, moral 
sentiments, social opinions, etc., of the subject. 
And it further shows that Hypnosis is probably, 
as they claim, a temporary disturbance, rather than 
a pathological condition of mind or body. 

There have been many remarkable and sensa- 
tional cases of cure of disease by hypnotic sug- 
gestion, reported especially in France. That hys- 
teria in many of its manifestations has been re- 
lieved is certainly true ; but that any organic, 
structural disease has ever been cured by hypno- 
tism is unproved. It is not regarded by medical 
authorities as an agent of much therapeutic value, 
and is rarely employed ; but it is doubtful, in 
view of the natural prejudice caused by the pre- 
tensions of charlatans, whether its merits have 
been fairly tested. On the European Continent it 
has been successfully applied in a great variety of 
cases ; and Bernheim has shown that minor nerv- 



SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 165 

ous troubles, insomnia, migraines, drunkenness, 
lighter cases of rheumatism, sexual and digestive 
disorders, together with a host of smaller tempo- 
rary causes of pain — corns, cricks in back and 
side, etc. — may be cured or very materially alle- 
viated by suggestions conveyed in the hypnotic 
state. In many cases such cures are permanently 
effected with aid from no other remedies. In a 
number of great city hospitals patients of recog- 
nised classes are at once hypnotized, and sugges- 
tions of cure made. Liebeault, the founder of 
the Nancy school, has the credit of having first 
made use of hypnosis as a remedial agent. It is 
also becoming more and more recognised as a 
method of controlling refractory and violent pa- 
tients in asylums and reformatory institutions. 
It must be added, however, that psychological 
theory rather than medical practice is seriously 
concerning itself with this subject. 

Theory. — Two rival theories are held as to the 
general character of Hypnosis. The Paris school 
already referred to, led by the late Dr. Charcot, 
hold that it is a pathological condition which is 
most readily induced in patients already mentally 
diseased or having neuropathic tendencies. They 
claim that the three stages described above are 
a discovery of great importance. The so-called 
Nancy school, on the other hand, led by Bern- 
heim, deny the pathological character of Hypnosis 
altogether, claiming that the hypnotic condition 
is nothing more than a special form of ordinary 
sleep brought on artificially by suggestion. Hyp- 
notic suggestion, say they, is only an exaggera- 
tion of an influence to which all persons are nor- 
mally subject. All the variations, stages, curious 
phenomena, etc., of the Paris school, they claim, 
12 



l66 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

can be explained by this " suggestion " hypothe- 
sis. The Nancy school must be considered com- 
pletely victorious apart from some facts which no 
theory has yet explained. 

Hypnotism shows an intimacy of interaction 
between mind and body to which current psychol- 
ogy is only beginning to do justice ; and it is this 
aspect of the whole matter which should be em- 
phasized in this connection. The hypnotic con- 
dition of consciousness may be taken to represent 
the working of Suggestion most remarkably. 



CHAPTER VHI. 

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND EDUCATIONAL 

PSYCHOLOGY. 

A GREAT deal has been said and written about 
the physical and mental differences shown by the 
young ; and one of the most oft-repeated of all 
the charges which we hear brought against the 
current methods of teaching is that all children 
are treated alike. The point is carried so far that 
a teacher is judged from the way he has or has 
not of getting at the children under him as indi- 
viduals. All this is a move in the right direction ; 
and yet the subject is still so vague that many of 
the very critics who declaim against the similar 
treatment which diverse pupils get at school have 
no clear idea of what is needed ; they merely 
make demands that the treatment shall suit the 
child. How each child is to be suited, and the 
inquiry still back of that, what peculiarity it is in 
this child or that which is to be " suited " — these 
things are left to settle themselves. 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 167 

It is my aim in this chapter to indicate some 
of the variations which are shown by different 
children ; and on the basis of such facts to en- 
deavour to arrive at a more definite idea of what 
variations of treatment are called for in the sev- 
eral classes into which the children are divided. 
I shall confine myself at first to those differences 
which are more hereditary and constitutional. 

First Period — Early Childhood. — The first and 
most comprehensive distinction is that based on 
the division of the life of man into the two great 
spheres of reception and action. The " sensory " 
and the " motor " are becoming the most common 
descriptive terms of current psychology. We 
hear all the while of sensory processes, sensory 
contents, sensory centres, sensory attention, etc. ; 
and, on the other hand, of motor processes, motor 
centres, motor ataxy, motor attention, motor con- 
sciousness, etc. And in the higher reaches of 
mental function, the same antithesis comes out in 
the contrast of sensory and motor aphasia, alexia, 
sensory and motor types of memory and imagina- 
tion, etc. Indeed the tendency is now strong to 
think that when we have assigned a given func- 
tion of consciousness to one or other side of the 
nervous apparatus, making it either sensory or 
motor, then our duty to it is done. Be that as it 
may, there is no doubt that the distinction is 
throwing great light on the questions of mind 
which involve also the correlative questions of 
the nervous system. This is true of all questions 
of educational psychology. 

This first distinction between children— as hav- 
ing general application — is that which I may 
cover by saying that some are more active, or 
motile, while others are more passive, or recep- 



1 68 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

tive. This is a common enough distinction ; but 
possibly a word or two on its meaning in the con- 
stitution of the child may give it more actual 
value. 

The " active " person to the psychologist is 
one who is very -responsive to what we have called 
Suggestions. Suggestions may be described in 
most general terms as any and all the influences 
from outside, from the environment, both phys- 
ical and personal, which get a lodgment in con- 
sciousness and lead to action. A child who is 
" suggestible " to a high degree shows it in what 
we call " motility." The suggestions which take 
hold of him translate themselves very directly 
into action. He tends to act promptly, quickly, 
unreflectively, assimilating the newer elements of 
the suggestions of the environment to the ways 
of behaviour fixed by his earlier habits. Generally 
such a person, child or adult, is said to "jump" 
at conclusions; he is anxious to know in order to 
act ; he acts in some way on all events or sug- 
gestions, even when no course of action is ex- 
plicitly suggested, and even when one attempts 
to keep him from acting. 

Psychologically such a person is dominated 
by habit. And this means that his nervous sys- 
tem sets, either by its hereditary tendencies or 
by the undue predominance of certain elements 
in his education, quickly in the direction of motor 
discharge. The great channels of readiest out- 
pouring from the brain into the muscles have be-, 
come fixed and pervious ; it is hard for the pro- 
cesses once started in the sense centres, such as 
those of sight, hearing, etc., to hold in their ener- 
gies. They tend to unstable equilibrium in the 
direction of certain motor combinations, which in 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 1 69 

their turn represent certain classes of acts. This 
is habit ; and the person of the extreme motor 
type is always a creature of habit. 

Now what is the line of treatment that such a 
child should have ? The necessity for getting an 
answer to this question is evident from what was 
said above — i. e., that the very rise of the condi- 
tion itself is due, apart from heredity, oftener 
than not to the fact that he has not had proper 
treatment from his teachers. 

The main point for a teacher to have in mind 
in dealing with such a boy or girl — the impulsive, 
active one, always responsive, but almost always 
in error in what he says and does — is that here 
is a case of habit. Habit is good ; indeed, if we 
should go a little further we should see that all 
education is the forming of habits; but here, in 
this case, what we have is not habits, but habit. 
This child shows a tendency to habit as such : to 
habits of any and every kind. The first care of 
the teacher in order to the control of the forma- 
tion of habits is in some way to bring about a 
little inertia of habit, so to speak — a short period 
of organic hesitation, during which the reasons 
pro and con for each habit may be brought into 
the consciousness of the child. 

The means by which this tendency to crude, 
inconsiderate action on the part of the child is to 
be controlled and regulated is one of the most 
typical questions for the intelligent teacher. Its 
answer must be different for children of different 
ages. The one thing to do, in general, however, 
from the psychologist's point of view, is in some 
way to bring about greater complications in the 
motor processes which the child uses most habit- 
ually, and with this complication to get greater 



170 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

inhibition along the undesirable lines of his ac- 
tivity. Inhibition is the damming up of the pro- 
cesses for a period, causing some kind of a " set- 
back " of the energies of movement into the 
sensory centres, or the redistribution of this en- 
ergy in more varied and less habitual discharges. 
With older children a rational method is to ana- 
lyze for them the mistakes they have made, show- 
ing the penalties they have brought upon them- 
selves by hasty action. This requires great 
watchfulness. In class work, the teacher may 
profitably point out the better results reached by 
the pupil who " stops to think." This will bring 
to the reform of the hasty scholar the added mo- 
tive of semi-public comparison with the more de- 
liberate members of the class. Such procedure is 
quite unobjectionable if made a recognised part 
of the class method ; yet care should be taken 
that no scholar suffer mortification from such 
comparisons. The matter may be "evened up" 
by dwelling also on the merit of promptness which 
the scholar in question will almost always be 
found to show. 

For younger pupils as well as older more in- 
direct methods of treatment are more effective. 
The teacher should study the scholar to find the 
general trend of his habits. Then oversight should 
be exercised over both his tasks and his sports 
with certain objects in view. His habitual actions 
should be made as complicated as his ability can 
cope with ; this in order to educate his habits and 
keep them from working back into mere mechan- 
ism. If he shows his fondness for drawing by 
marking his desk, see that he has drawing mate- 
rials at hand and some intelligent tasks in this line 
to do; not as tasks, but for himself. Encourage 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 171 

him to make progress always, not simply to repeat 
himself. If he has awkward habits of movement 
with his hands and feet, try to get him interested 
in games that exercise these members in regular 
and skilful ways. 

Furthermore, in his intellectual tasks such a 
pupil should be trained, as far as may be, on the 
more abstract subjects, which do not give imme- 
diate openings for action. Mathematics is the 
best possible discipline for him. Grammar also 
is good; it serves at once to interest him, if it is 
well taught, in certain abstract relationships, and 
also to send out his motor energies in the exer- 
cise of speech, which is the function which al- 
ways needs exercise, and which is always under 
the observation of the teacher. Grammar, in fact, 
is one of the very best of primary-school subjects, 
because instruction in it issues at once in the very 
motor functions which embody the relationships 
which the teacher seeks to impress. The teacher 
has in his ear, so to speak, the evidence as to 
whether his instruction is understood or not. 
This gives him a valuable opportunity to keep 
his instruction well ahead of its motor expres- 
sion — thus leading the pupil to think rather 
than to act without thinking — and at the same 
time to point out the errors of performance 
which follow from haste in passing from thought 
to action. 

These indirect methods of reaching the impul- 
sive pupil should never be cast aside for the direct 
effort to " control " such a scholar. The very worst 
thing that can be done to such a boy or girl is to 
command him or her to sit still or not to act; 
and a still worse thing — to make a comparative 
again on the head of the superlative — is to affix 



172 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

to the command painful penalties. This is a di- 
rect violation of the principle of Suggestion. 
Such a command only tends to empty the pupil's 
mind of other objects of thought and interest, and 
so to keep his attention upon his own movements. 
This, then, amounts to a continual suggestion to 
him to do just what you want to keep him from 
doing. On the contrary, unless you give him 
suggestions and interests which lead his thought 
away from his acts, it is impossible not to aggra- 
vate his bad tendencies by your very efforts. This 
is the way, as I intimated above, that many teach- 
ers create or confirm bad habits in their pupils, 
and so render any amount of well-intended posi- 
tive instruction abortive. It seems well estab- 
lished that a suggestion of the negative — that is, 
not to do a thing — has no negative force; but, 
on the contrary, in the early period, it amounts 
only to a stronger suggestion in the positive 
sense, since it adds emphasis, to the thing which 
is forbidden. The "not" in a prohibition is no 
addition to the pictured course to which it is 
attached, and the physiological fact that the at- 
tention tends to set up action upon that which is 
attended to comes in to put a premium on dis- 
obedience. Indeed, the philosophy of all punish- 
ment rests in this consideration, i. e., that unless 
the penalty tends to fill the mind with some object 
other than the act punished, it does more harm 
than good. The punishment must be actual and 
its nature diverting; never a threat which termi- 
nates there, nor a penalty which fixes the thought 
of the offence more strongly in mind. This is to 
say, that the permanent inhibition of a movement 
at this period is best secured by establishing some 
different movement. 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 1 73 

The further consideration of the cases of great 
motility would lead to the examination of the 
kinds of memory and imagination and their treat- 
ment ; to that we return below. We may now 
take up the instances of the sensory type consid- 
ered with equal generality. 

The sensory children are in the main those 
which seem more passive, more troubled with 
physical inertia, more contemplative when a little 
older, less apt in learning to act out new move- 
ments, less quick at taking a hint, etc. 

These children are generally further distin- 
guished as being — and here the antithesis to the 
motor ones is very marked — much less suggesti- 
ble. They seem duller when young. Boys often 
get credit for dulness compared with girls on this 
account. Even as early as the second year can 
this distinction among children be readily ob- 
served in many instances. The motor child will 
show sorrow by loud crying and vigorous action, 
while the sensory child will grieve in quiet, and 
continue to grieve when the other has forgotten 
the disagreeable occurrence altogether. The mo- 
tor one it is that asks a great many questions and 
seems to learn little from the answers ; while the 
sensory one learns simply from hearing the ques- 
tions of the other and the answers given to them. 
The motor child, again, gets himself hurt a great 
many times in the same way, without developing 
enough self-control to restrain himself from the 
same mistake again and again ; the sensory child 
tends to be timid in the presence of the unknown 
and uncertain, to learn from one or a few experi- 
ences, and to hold back until he gets satisfactory 
assurances that danger is absent. The former 
tends to be more restless in sitting, standing, etc., 



174 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

more demonstrative in affection, more impulsive 
in action, more forgiving in disposition. 

As to the treatment of the sensory child, it is a 
problem of even greater difficult}'' and danger than 
that of his motor brother. The very nature of 
the distinction makes it evident that while the 
motor individual " gives himself away," so to 
speak, by constantly acting out his impressions, 
and so revealing his progress and his errors, with 
the other it is not so. All knowledge that we 
are ever able to get of the m.ental condition of 
another individual is through his movements, ex- 
pressive, in a technical sense, or of other kinds, 
such as his actions, attitudes, lines of conduct, etc. 
We have no way to read thought directly. So just 
in so far as the sensory individual is less active, 
to that degree he is less expressive, less self- 
revealing. To the teacher, therefore, he is more 
of an enigma. It is harder to tell in his case what 
instruction he has appreciated and made his own; 
and what, on the other hand, has been too hard 
for him; what wise, and what unwise. Where the 
child of movement speaks out his impulsive inter- 
pretations, this one sinks into himself and gives 
no answer. So we are deprived of the best way 
of interpreting him — that afforded by his own in- 
terpretation of himself. ; 

A general policy of caution is therefore 
strongly to be recommended. Let the teacher 
wait in every case for some positive indication of 
the child's real state of mind. Even the directions 
given the child may not have been understood, or 
the quick word of admonition may have wounded 
him, or a duty which is so elementary as to be a 
commonplace in the mental life of the motor child 
may yet be so vaguely apprehended that to insist 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 175 

upon its direct performance may cost the teacher 
all his influence with the pupil of this type. It is 
better to wait even at the apparent risk of losing 
valuable days than to proceed a single step upon 
a mistaken estimate of the child's measure of 
assimilation. And, further, the effect of wrong 
treatment upon this boy or girl is very different 
from that of a similar mistake in the other case. 
He becomes more silent, retired, even secretive, 
when once an unsympathetic relationship is sug- 
gested between him and his elder. 

Then more positively — his instruction should 
be well differentiated. He should in every pos- 
sible case be given inducements to express him- 
self. Let him recite a great deal. Give him 
simple verses to repeat. Keep him talking all 
you can. Show him his mistakes with the utmost 
deliberation and kindliness of manner ; and induce 
him to repeat his performances in your hearing 
after the correction has been suggested. Culti- 
vate the imitative tendency in him ; it is the hand- 
maid to the formation of facile habits of action. 
In arranging the children's games, see that he 
gets the very active parts, even though he be 
backward and hesitating about assuming them. 
Make him as far as possible a leader, in order to 
cultivate his sense of responsibility for the doing 
of things, and to lead to the expression of his 
understanding of arrangements, etc. In it all, the 
essential thing is to bring him out in some kind 
of expression ; both for the sake of the improved 
balance it gives himself, and as an indication to 
the observant teacher of his progress and of the 
next step to be taken in his development. 

It is for the sensory child, I think, that the 
kindergarten has its great utility. It gives him 



176 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

facility in movement and expression, and also 
some degree of personal and social confidence. 
But for the same reasons the kindergarten over- 
stimulates the motor scholars at the correspond- 
ing age. There should really be two kindergarten 
methods — one based on the idea of deliberation, 
the other on that of expression. 

The task of the educator here, it is evident, 
is to help nature correct a tendency to one-sided 
development; just as the task is this also in the 
former case; but here the variation is on the side 
of idiosyncrasy ultimately, and of genius imme- 
diately. For genius, I think, is the more often 
developed from the contemplative mind, with the 
relatively dammed-up brain, of this child, than 
from the smooth-working machine of the motor 
one. But just for this reason, if the damming- 
up be liberated, not in the channels of healthy 
assimilation, and duly correlated growth, but in 
the forced discharges of violent emotion, fol- 
lowed by conditions of melancholy and by certain 
unsocial tendencies, then the promise of genius 
ripens into eccentricity, and the blame is possi- 
bly ours. 

It. seems true — although great caution is neces- 
sary in drawing inferences — that here a certain dis- 
tinction may be found to hold also between the 
sexes. It is possible that the apparent precocious 
alertness of girls in their school years, and earlier, 
may be simply a predominance among them of 
the motor individuals. This is borne out by the 
examination of the kinds of performance in which 
they seem to be more forward than boys. It re- 
solves itself, so far as my observation goes, into 
greater quickness of response and greater agility 
in performance ; not greater constructiveness, nor 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 177 

greater power of concentrated attention. The 
boys seem to need more instruction because they 
do not learn as much for themselves by acting 
upon what they already know. In later years, the 
distinction gets levelled off by the common agen- 
cies of education, and by the setting of tasks re- 
quiring more thought than the mere spontaneities 
of either type avail to furnish. Yet all the way 
through, I think there is something in the ordi- 
nary belief that woman is relatively more impul- 
sive and more prone to the less reflective forms 
of action. 

What has now been said may be sufficient to 
give some concrete force to the common opinion 
that education should take account of the individ- 
ual character at this earliest stage. The general 
distinction between sensory and motor has, how- 
ever, a higher application in the matter of memory 
and imagination at later stages of growth, to which 
we may now turn. 

Second Period. — The research is of course more 
difficult as the pupil grows older, since the influ- 
ences of heredity tend to become blurred by the 
more constant elements of the child's home, school, 
and general social environment. The child whom 
I described just above as sensory in his type is 
constantly open to influences from the stimulat- 
ing behaviour of his motor companion, as well as 
from the direct measures which parent and teacher 
take to overcome his too-decided tendencies and 
to prevent one-sided development. So, too, the 
motor child tends to find correctives in his envi- 
ronment. 

The analogy, however, between the more or- 
ganic and hereditary differences in individuals, and 
the intellectual and moral variations which they 



178 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

tend to develop with advance in school age, is 
very marked ; and we find a similar series of dis- 
tinctions in the later period. The reason that there 
is a correspondence between the variations given 
in heredity and those due in the main to the edu- 
cative influences of the single child's social envi- 
ronment is in itself very suggestive, but space 
does not permit its exposition here. 

The fact is this : the child tends, under the in- 
fluence of his home, school, social surroundings, 
etc., to develop a marked character either in the 
sensory or in the motor direction, in his memory, 
imagination, and general type of mind. 

Taking up the " motor " child first, as before, 
we find that his psychological growth"tends to con- 
firm him in his hereditary type. In all his social 
dealing with other children he is more or less dom- 
ineering and self-assertive ; or at least his conduct 
leads one to form that opinion of him. He seems 
to be constantly impelled to act so as to show 
himself off. He " performs " before people, shows 
less modesty than may be thought desirable in 
one of his tender years, impresses the forms of his 
own activity upon the other children, who come to 
stand about him with minds constrained to follow 
him. He is an object lesson in both the advan- 
tages and the risks of an aggressive life policy. 
He has a suggestion to make in every emergency, 
a line of conduct for each of his company, all 
marked out or supplied on the spur of the mo- 
ment by his own quick sense of appropriate ac- 
tion ; and for him, as for no one else, to hesitate 
is to be lost. 

Now what this general policy or method of 
growth means to his consciousness is becoming 
more and more clear in the light of the theory of 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 1 79 

mental types. The reason a person is motor is 
that his mind tends always to be filled up most 
easily with memories or revived images of the 
twitchings, tensions, contractions, expansions, of 
the activities of the muscular system. He is a 
motor because the means of his thought generally, 
the mental coins which pass current in his thought 
exchange, are muscular sensations or the traces 
which such sensations have left in his memory. 
The very means by which he thinks of a situation, 
an event, a duty, is not the way it looked, or the 
way it sounded, or the way it smelt, tasted, or felt 
to the touch — in any of the experiences to which 
these senses are involved — but the means, the 
representatives, the instruments of his thought, 
are the feelings of the way he has acted. He has 
a tendency — and he comes to have it more and 
more — to get a muscular representation of every- 
thing ; and his gauge of the value of this or that 
is this muscular measure of it, in terms of the ac- 
tion which it is calculated to draw out. 

It is then this preference for one particular 
kind of mental imagery, and that the motor, or 
muscular kind, which gives this type of child his 
peculiarity in this more psychological period. 
When we pass from the mere outward and organic 
description of his peculiarities, attempted above 
in the case of very young children, and aim to 
ascertain the mental peculiarity which accom- 
panies it and carries on the type through the in- 
dividual's maturer years, we see our way to its 
meaning. The fact is that a peculiar kind of 
mental imagery tends to swell up in consciousness 
and monopolize the theatre of thought. This is 
only another way of saying that the attention is 
more or less educated in the direction represented 



l8o THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

by this sort of imagery. Every time a movement 
is thought of, in preference to a sound or a sight 
which is also available, the habit of giving the at- 
tention to the muscular equivalents of things be- 
comes more firmly fixed. This continues until 
the motor habit of attention becomes the only 
easy and normal way of attending ; and then the 
person is fixed in his type for one, many, or all of 
his activities of thinking and action. 

So now it is no longer difficult to see, I trust, 
why it is that the child or youth of this sort has 
the characteristics which he has. It is a familiar 
principle that attention to the thought of a move- 
ment tends to start that very movement. I defy 
any of my readers to think hard and long of wink- 
ing the left eye and not have an almost irresisti- 
ble impulse to wink that eye. There is no better 
way to make it difficult for a child to sit still than 
to tell him to sit still ; for your words fill up his 
attention, as I had occasion to say above, with the 
thought of movements, and these thoughts bring 
on the movements, despite the best intentions of 
the child in the way of obedience. Watch an au- 
dience of little children — and children of an older 
growth will also do — when an excited speaker 
harangues them with many gestures, and see the 
comical reproduction of the gestures by the chil- 
dren's hands. They picture the movements, the 
attention is fixed on them, and appropriate actions 
follow. 

It is only the generalizing of these phenomena 
that we find realized in the boy or girl of the mo- 
tor type. Such a child is constantly thinking of 
things by their movement equivalents. Muscular 
sensations throng up in consciousness at every 
possible signal and by every train of association ; 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. l8l 

SO it is not at all surprising that all informations, 
instructions, warnings, reproofs, suggestions, pass 
right through such a child's consciousness and ex- 
press themselves by the channels of movement. 
Hence the impulsive, restless, domineering, un- 
meditative character of the child. We may now 
endeavour to describe a little more closely his 
higher mental traits. 

1. In the first place the motor mind tends to 
very quick generalization. Every teacher knows the 
boys in school who anticipate their conclusions, 
on the basis of a single illustration. They reach 
the general notion which is most broad in extent, 
in application, but most shallow in intent, in rich- 
ness, in real explaining or descriptive meaning. 
For example, such a boy will hear the story of 
Napoleon, proceed to define heroism in terms of 
military success, and then go out and try the Na- 
poleon act upon his playfellows. This tendency 
to generalize is the mental counterpart of the tend- 
ency to act seen in his conduct. The reason he 
generalizes is that the brain energies are not held 
back in the channels of perception, but pour them- 
selves right out toward the motor equivalents of 
former perceptions which were in any way simi- 
lar ; then the present perceptions are lost in the 
old ones toward which attention is held by habit, 
and action follows. To the child all heroes are 
Napoleons because Napoleon was the first hero, 
and the channels of action inspired by him suffice 
now for the appropriate conduct. 

2. Such a scholar isv^ry poor at noting and re- 
membering distinctions. This follows naturally from 
the hasty generalizations which he makes. Hav- 
ing once identified a new fact as the same as an 
old one, and having so reached a defective sense 

13 



1 82 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

of the general class, it is then more and more hard 
for him to retrace his steps and sort out the expe- 
riences more carefully. Even when he discovers 
his mistake, his old impulse to act seizes him again, 
and he rushes to some new generalization where- 
with to replace the old, again falling into error by 
his stumbling haste to act. The teacher is oftener 
perhaps brought to the verge of impatience by 
scholars of this class than by any others. 

3. Following, again, from these characteristics, 
there is a third remark to be made about the youth 
of this type ; and it bears upon a peculiarity which 
it is very hard for the teacher to estimate and con- 
trol. These motor boys and girls have what I may 
characterize as fluidity of the attention. By this is 
meant a peculiar quality of mind which all expe- 
rienced teachers are in some degree familiar with, 
and which they find baffling and unmanageable. 

By "fluidity" of the attention I mean the state 
of hurry, rush, inadequate inspection, quick transi- 
tion, all-too-ready-assimilation, hear-but-not-heed, 
in-one-ear-and-out-the-other habit of mind. The 
best way to get an adequate sense of the state is 
to recall the pupil who has it to the most marked 
degree, and picture his mode of dealing with your 
instructions. Such a pupil hears your words, says 
" yes," even acts appropriately so far as your im- 
mediate instructions go ; but when he comes to 
the same situation again, he is as virginly inno- 
cent of your lesson as if his teacher had never 
been born. Psychologically, the state differs from 
preoccupation, which characterizes quite a differ- 
ent type of mind. The motor boy is not preoccu- 
pied. Far from that, he is quite ready to attend to 
you. But when he attends, it is with a momentary 
concentration — with a rush like the flow of a 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 183 

mountain stream past the point of the bank on 
which you sit. His attention is flowing, always 
in transition, leaping from *' it to that," with su- 
perb agility and restlessness. But the exercise it 
gains from its movements is its only reward. Its 
acquisitions are slender in the extreme. It illus- 
trates, on the mental plane, the truth of the " roll- 
ing stone." It corresponds, as a mental charac- 
ter, to the muscular restlessness which the same 
type of child shows in the earlier period previously 
spoken of. 

The psychological explanation of this " fluid 
attention " is more or less plain, but I can not take 
space to expound it. Suffice it to say that the 
attention is itself, probably, in its brain seat, a 
matter of the motor centres ; its physical seat both 
"gives and takes" in co-operation with the pro- 
cesses which shed energy out into the muscles. 
So it follows that, in the ready muscular revivals, 
discharges, transitions, which we have seen to be 
prominent in the motor temperament the atten- 
tion is carried along, and its " fluidity " is only an 
incident to the fluidity of the motor symbols of 
which this sort of a mind continually makes use. 

Coming a little closer to the pedagogical prob- 
lems which this type of pupil raises before us, we 
find, in the first place, that it is excessively diffi- 
cult for this scholar to give continuous or ade- 
quate attention to anything of any complexity. 
The movements of attention are so easy, the out- 
lets of energy, to use the physical figure, so large 
and well used, that the muior relationships of the 
thing are passed over. The variations of the ob- 
ject from its class are swept away in the onrush 
of his motor tendencies. He assumes the facts 
which he does not understand, and goes right on 



184 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

to express himself in action on these assumptions. 
So while he seems to take in what is told him, 
with an intuition that is surprisingly swift, and a 
personal adaptation no less surprising, the disap- 
pointment is only the more keen when the in- 
structor finds the next day that he has not pene- 
trated at all into the inner current of this scholar's 
mental processes. 

Again, as marked as this is in its early stages, 
the continuance of it leads to results which are 
nothing short of deplorable. When such a stu- 
dent has gone through a preparatory school with- 
out overcoming this tendency to "fluid atten- 
tion " and comes to college, the instructors in the 
higher institutions are practically helpless before 
him. We say of him that " he has never learned 
to study," that he does not know " how to apply 
himself," that he has no "power of assimilation." 
All of which simply means that his channels of 
reaction are so formed already that no instruc- 
tion can get sufficient lodgment in him to bring 
about any modification of his "apperceptive sys- 
tems." The embarrassment is the more marked 
because such a youth, all through his educa- 
tion period, is willing, ready, evidently receptive, 
prompt, and punctual in all his tasks. 

Xow what shall be done with such a student 
in his early school years ? This is a question for 
the secondary teacher especially, apart from the 
more primary measures recommended above. It 
is in the years between eight and fifteen that this 
type of mind has its rapid development; before 
that the treatment is mainly preventive, and con- 
sists largely in suggestions which aim to make 
the muscular discharges more deliberate and the 
general tone less explosive. But when the boy 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 185 

or girl comes to school with the dawning capa- 
city for independent self-direction and personal 
application, then it is that the problem of the mo- 
tor scholar becomes critical. The '' let-alone " 
method puts a premium upon the development of 
his tendencies and the eventual playing out of 
his mental possibilities in mere motion. Certain 
positive ways of giving some indirect discipline 
to the mind of this type may be suggested. 

Give this student relatively difficult and com- 
plex tasks. There is no way to hinder his ex- 
uberant self-discharges except by measures which 
embarrass and baffle him. We can not " lead him 
into all truth "; we have to drive him back from 
all error. The lessons of psychology are to the 
effect that the normal way to teach caution and 
deliberation is the way of failure, repulse, and 
unfortunate, even painful, consequences. Per- 
sonal appeals to him do little good, since it is a 
part of his complaint that he is too ready to hear 
all appeals; and also, since he is not aware of his 
own lack nor able to carry what he hears into ef- 
fect. So keep him in company of scholars a lit- 
tle more advanced than he is. Keep him out of 
the concert recitations, where his tendency to 
haste would work both personal and social harm. 
Refrain from giving him assistance in his tasks 
until he has learned from them something of the 
real lesson of discouragement, and then help him 
only by degrees, and by showing him one step at 
a time, with constant renewals of his own efforts. 
Shield him with the greatest pains from distrac- 
tions of all kinds, for even the things and events 
about him may carry his attention off at the most 
critical moments. Give him usually the second- 
ary parts in the games of the school, except when 



1 86 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

real planning, complex execution, and more or 
less generalship are required ; then give him the 
leading parts : they exercise his activities in new 
ways not covered by habit, and if he do not rise 
to their complexity, then the other party to the 
sport will, and his haste will have its own punish- 
ment, and so be a lesson to him. 

Besides these general checks and regulations, 
there remains the very important question as to 
what studies are most available for this type of 
mind. I have intimated already the general an- 
swer that ought to be given to this question. The 
aim of the studies of the motor student should be 
discipline in the direction of correct generaliza- 
tion, and, as helpful to this, discipline in careful 
observation of concrete facts. On the other hand, 
the studies which involve principles simply of a 
descriptive kind should have little place in his 
daily study. They call out largely the more me- 
chanical operations of memory, and their com- 
mand can be secured for the most part by mere 
repetition of details all similar in character and 
of equal value. The measure of the utility to 
him of the. different studies of the schoolroom is 
found in the relative demand they make upon 
him to modify his hasty personal reactions, to 
suspend his thoughtless rush to general results, 
and back of it all, to hold the attention long enough 
upon the facts as they arise to get some sense of 
the logical relationships which bind them togeth- 
er. Studies which do not afford any logical rela- 
tionships, and which tend, on the contrary, to fos- 
ter the habit of learning by repetition, only tend 
to fix the student in the quality of attention which 
I have called "fluidity." 

In particular, therefore : give this student all 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 187 

the mathematics he can absorb, and pass him from 
arithmetic into geometry, leaving his algebra till 
later. Give him plenty of grammar, taught in- 
ductively. Start him early in the elements of 
physics and chemistry. And as opposed to this, 
keep him out of the classes of descriptive botany 
and zoology. Rather let him join exploring par- 
ties for the study of plants, stones, and animals. 
A few pet animals are a valuable adjunct to any 
school museum. If there be an industrial school 
or machine shop near at hand, try to get him in- 
terested in the way things are made, and encour- 
age him to join in such employments. A false 
generalization in the wheels of a cart supplies its 
own corrective very quickly, or in the rigging and 
sails of a toy boat. Drawing from models is a 
fine exercise for such a youth, and drawing from 
life, as soon as he gets a little advanced in the 
control of his pencil. All this, it is easy to see, 
trains his impulsive movements into some degree 
of subjection to the deliberative processes. 

With this general line of treatment in mind, 
the details of which the reader will work out in 
the light of the boy's type, space allows me only 
two more points before I pass to the sensory 
scholar. 

First, in all the teaching of the type of mind 
now in question, pursue' a method which proceeds 
from the particular to the general. The discus- 
sion of pedagogical method with all its ins and 
outs needs to take cognizance of the differences 
of students in their type. The motor student 
should never, in normal cases, be given a general 
formula and told to work out particular instances ; 
that is too much his tendency already— to ap- 
proach facts from the point of view of their re- 



l88 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

semblances. What he needs rather is a sense of 
the dignity of the single fact, and of the neces- 
sity of giving it its separate place, before hasten- 
ing on to lose it in the flow of a general state- 
ment. So whether the teacher have in hand math- 
ematics, grammar, or science, let him disclose the 
principles only gradually, and always only so far 
as they are justified by the observations which 
the boy has been led to make for himself. For 
the reason that such a method is practically im- 
possible in the descriptive sciences, and some 
other branches, as taught in the schoolbooks — 
botany, zoology, and, worse than all, history and 
geography — we should restrict their part in the 
discipline studies of such a youth. They require 
simple memory, without observation, and put a 
premium on hasty and temporary acquisition. 

As I have said, algebra should be subordinated 
to geometry. Algebra has as its distinctive meth- 
od the principle of substitution, whereby symbols 
of equal and, for the most part, absolute general- 
ity are substituted for one another, and the re- 
sults stand for one fact as well as for another, in 
disregard of the worth of the particular in the 
scheme of nature. For the same reason, deduct- 
ive logic is not a good discipline for these stu- 
dents; empirical psychology, or political econo- 
my, is a better introduction to the moral sciences 
for them when they reach the high school. This 
explains what was meant above in the remark as 
to the method of teaching grammar. As to lan- 
guage study generally, I think the value of it, at 
this period, and later, is extraordinarily overrated. 
The proportion of time given to language study 
in our secondary schools is nothing short of a 
public crime in its effect upon students of this 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 189 

type — and indeed of an)^ type. This, however, is 
a matter to which we return below. The average 
student comes to college with his sense of explo- 
ration, his inductive capacity, stifled at its birth. 
He stands appalled when confronted with the un- 
assimilated details of any science which does not 
give him a "key " in the shape of general formu- 
las made up beforehand. Were it not that his 
enlarging experience of life is all the while 
running counter to the trend of his so-called 
education, he would probably graduate ready 
for the social position in which authority takes 
the place of evidence, and imitation is the method 
of life. 

Second, the teacher should be on the lookout 
for a tendency which is very characteristic of a 
student of this type, the tendency, i. e., to fall 
into elaborate guessing at results. Take a little 
child of about seven or eight years of age, espe- 
cially one who has the marks of motor heredity, 
and observe the method of his acquisition of new 
words in reading. First he speaks the word which 
his habit dictates, and, that being wrong, he rolls 
his eyes away from the text and makes a guess 
of the first word that comes into his mind; this 
he keeps up as long as the teacher persists in ask- 
ing him to try again. Here is the same tendency 
that carries him later on in his education to a 
general conclusion by a short cut. He has not 
learned to interpret the data of a deliberate judg- 
ment, and his attention does not dwell on the 
necessary details. So with him all through his 
training; he is always ready with a guess. Here, 
again, the teacher can do him good only by pa- 
tiently employing the inductive method. Lead 
him back to the simplest elements of the problem 



190 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

in hand, and help him gradually to build up a re- 
sult step by step. 

I think in this, as in most of the work with 
these scholars, the association with children of 
the opposite type is one of the best correctives, 
provided the companionship is not made altogeth- 
er one-sided by the motor boy's perpetual monop- 
olizing of all the avenues of personal expression. 
When he fails in the class, the kind of social les- 
son which is valuable may be taught him by sub- 
mitting the same question to a pupil of the plod- 
ding, deliberate kind, and waiting for the latter 
to work it out. Of course, if the teacher have 
any supervision over the playground, similar treat- 
ment can be employed there. 

Coming to consider the so-called "sensory" 
youth of the age between eight, let us say, and 
sixteen — the age during which the training of the 
secondary school presents its great problems — we 
find certain interesting contrasts between this 
type and that already characterized as " motor." 
The study of this type of youth is the more press- 
ing for reasons which I have already hinted in 
considering the same type in the earlier childhood 
period. It is necessary, first, to endeavour to get 
a fairly adequate view of the psychological char- 
acteristics of this sort of pupil. 

The current psychological doctrine of mental 
" types " rests upon a great mass of facts, drawn 
in the first instance from the different kinds of 
mental trouble, especially those which involve 
derangements of speech — the different kinds of 
Aphasia. The broadest generalization which is 
reached from these facts is that which marks the 
distinction, of which I have already said so much, 
between the motor and the sensory types. But 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 191 

besides this general distinction there are many 
finer ones; and in considering the persons of the 
sensory type, it is necessary to inquire into these 
finer distinctions. Not only do men and children 
differ in the matter of the sort of mental material 
which they find requisite, as to whether it is pic- 
tures of movements on the one hand, or pictures 
from the special senses on the other hand ; but 
they differ also in the latter case with respect to 
which of the special senses it is, in this case or 
that, which gives the particular individual his 
necessary cue, and his most perfect function. So 
we find inside of the general group called "sen- 
sory" several relatively distinct cases, all of which 
the teacher is likely to come across in varying num- 
bers in a class of pupils. Of these the "visual " 
and the "auditory" are most important. 

There are certain aspects of the case which 
are so common to all the cases of sensory minds, 
whether they be visual, auditory, or other, that I 
may set them out before proceeding further. 

First, in all these matters of type distinction, 
one of the essential things to observe is the be- 
haviour of the Attention. We have already seen 
that the attention is implicated ta a remarkable 
degree — in what I called " fluid attention " above 
— in the motor scholar. The same implication of 
the attention occurs in all the sensory cases, but 
presents very different aspects ; and the common 
fact that the attention is directly involved affords 
us one of the best rules of judgment and distinc- 
tion. We may say, generally, of the sensory 
children, that the attention is best, most facile, 
most interest-carrying for some one preferred 
sense, leading for this sense into preoccupation 
and ready distraction. This tendency manifests 



192 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

itself, as we saw above, in the motor persons also, 
taking effect in action, speed, vivacity, hasty gen- 
eralization, etc. ; but in the sensory one it takes 
on varying forms. This first aspect of our typical 
distinction of minds we may call "the relation of 
the * favoured function ' to the attention." 

Then, second, there is another and somewhat 
contrasted relation which also assumes importance 
when we come to consider individual cases; and 
that is the relation of the " favoured function " 
— say movement, vision, hearing, etc. — to Habit. 
It is a common enough observation, that habit 
renders functions easy, and that habits are hard 
to break ; indeed, all treatment of habits is likely 
to degenerate into the commonplace. But, when 
looked at as related to the attention, certain 
truths emerge from the consideration of habit. 

In general, we may say that habit bears a two- 
fold relation to attention : on the one \i2iX\<\^ facile 
attention shows the reign of habit. The solid acqui- 
sitions are those with which attention is at home, 
and which are therefore more or less habitual. 
But, on the other hand, it is equally true that at- 
tention is in inverse ratio to habit. We need to at- 
tend least to these functions which are most 
habitual, and we have to attend most to those 
which are novel and only half acquired. We get 
new acquisitions mainly, indeed, by strained at- 
tention. So we have a contrast of possible in- 
terpretations in all cases of sharp and exclusive 
attention by the children: does the attention repre- 
sent a Habit in this particular action of the child? — 
or, does it represent the breaking up of a habit, an act 
of Accommodation 2 In each case these questions 
have to be intelligently considered. The motor 
person, usually, when uninstructed and not held 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 193 

back, uses his attention under the lead of habit. 
It is largely the teacher's business in his case, as 
we saw, to get him to hold, conserve, and direct 
his attention steadily to the novel and the com- 
plex. The sensory person, on the other hand, 
shows the attention obstructed by details, hin- 
dered by novelties, unable to pass smoothly over 
its acquisitions, and in general lacking the regu- 
lar influence of habit in leading him to summarize 
and utilize his mental store in general ways. 

The third general aspect of the topic is this: 
the person of the sensory type is more likely to be 
the one in whom positive derangement occurs in 
the higher levels, and in response to the more re- 
fined social and personal influences. This, for 
the reason that this type represents brain pro- 
cesses of greater inertia and complexity, with 
greater liability to obstruction. They are slower, 
and proceed over larger brain areas. 

With these general remarks, then, on the wider 
aspects of the distinction of types, we may now, 
turn to one of the particular cases which occurs 
among sensory individuals. This is all that our 
space will allow. 

The Visual Type. — The so-called "visuals," or 
"eye-minded " people among us, are numerically 
the largest class of the sensory population. They 
resort to visual imagery whenever possible, either 
because that is the prevailing tendency with them, 
or because, in the particular function in question 
m any special act, the visual material comes most 
readily to mind. The details of fact regarding 
the "visuals" are very interesting; but I shall 
not take space to dwell upon them. The sphere 
in which the facts regarding the pupil of this type 
are important to the teacher is that of language, 



194 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

taken with the group of problems which arise 
about instruction in language. The question of 
his symbolism, and its relation to mathematics, 
logic, etc., is important. And finally, the sphere 
of the pupil's expression in all its forms. Then, 
from all his discoveries in these things, the teacher 
is called upon to make his method of teaching 
and his general treatment suitable to this student. 
The visual pupil usually shows himself to be 
so predominately in his speech and language 
functions; he learns best and fastest from copies 
which he sees. He delights in illustrations put 
in terms of vision, as when actually drawn out on 
the blackboard for him to see. He understands 
what he reads better than what he hears; and he 
uses his visual symbols as a sort of common coin 
into which to convert the images which come to 
him through his other senses. In regard to the 
movements of attention, we may say that this boy 
or girl illustrates both the aspects of the attention- 
function which I pointed out above ; he attends 
best — that is, most effectively — to visual instruc- 
tion provided he exert himself; but, on the other 
hand, it is just here that the drift of habit tends 
to make him superficial. As attention to the vis- 
ual is the most easy for him, and as the details of 
his visual stock are most familiar, so he tends to 
pass too quickly over the new matters which are 
presented to him, assimilating the details to the 
old schemes of his habit. It is most important 
to observe this distinction, since it is analogous 
to the '' fluid attention " of the motor scholar ; 
and some of the very important questions regard- 
ing correlation of studies, the training of atten- 
tion, and the stimulation of interest depend upon 
its recognition. Acquisition best just where it is 



THE TRAINLNG OF THE MIND. 195 

most likely to go W7'ong ; that is the state of things. 
The voluntary use of the visual function gives 
the best results; but the habitual, involuntary, 
slipshod use of it gives bad results, and tends to 
the formation of injurious habits. 

For example, I set a strongly visual boy a 
*' copy " to draw. Seeing this visual copy he will 
quickly recognise it, take it to be very easy, dash 
it off quickly, all under the lead of habit; but his 
result is poor, because his habit has taken the place 
of effort. Once get him to make effort upon it, 
however, and his will be the best result of all the 
scholars, perhaps, just because the task calls him 
out in the line of his favoured function. The 
same antithesis comes out in connection with 
other varieties of sensory scholars. 

We may say, therefore, in regard to two of 
the general aspects of mental types — the relation 
of the favoured function to attention, on the one 
hand, and to habit, on the other — that they both 
find emphatic illustration in the pupil of the vis- 
ual type. He is, more than any other sensory 
pupil, a special case. His mental processes set de- 
cidedly toward vision. He is the more important, 
also, because he is so common. Statistics are lack- 
ing, but possibly half of the entire human family 
in civilized life are visual in their type for most of 
the language functions. This is due, no doubt, to 
the emphasis that civilization puts upon sight as 
the means of social acquisition generally, and to 
our predominantly visual methods of instruction. 

The third fact mentioned is also illustrated by 
this type ; the fact that mental instruction and 
derangement may come easily, through the stress 
laid upon vision in the person's mental economy. 
I need not enlarge upon the different forms of 



196 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

special defect which come through impairment of 
sight by central lesion or degeneration of the 
visual centers and connections. Suffice it to say- 
that they are very common, and very difficult of 
recovery. The visual person is often so com- 
pletely a slave to his sight that when that fails 
either in itself or through weakness of attention 
he becomes a wreck off the shore of the ocean of 
intellect. When w^e consider the large proportion 
just mentioned of pupils of this type, the care 
which should be exercised by the school authori- 
ties in the matter of favourable conditions of 
light, avoidance of visual fatigue, proper distance- 
adjustments in all visual application as regards 
focus, symmetry, size of objects, copies, prints, 
etc., becomes at once sufficiently evident to the 
thoughtful teacher, as it should be still earlier to 
the parent. There should be a medical examina- 
tion, by a competent oculist, before the child 
goes to school, and regular tests afterward. 
School examiners and boards should have quali- 
fications for reporting on the hygienic conditions 
of the school as regards lighting. The bright 
glare of a neighbouring wall before a window 
toward which children with weak eyes face when 
at their desks may result not only in common 
defects of vision but also in resulting mental and 
moral damage ; and the results are worse to those 
who depend mainly on vision for the food, drink, 
and exercise, so to speak, of their growing minds. 
As to the methods of teaching these and also 
the other sensory pupils, the indications already 
given must suffice. The statement of some of 
these far-reaching problems of educational psy- 
chology, and of the directions in which their 
answers are to be sought, exhausts the purpose of 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 197 

this chapter. In general it may be said that the 
recommendations made for the treatment of sen- 
sory children at the earlier stage may be extended 
to later periods also, and that the treatment 
should be, for the most part, in intelligent con- 
trast to that which the motor pupils receive. 

Language Study. — From this general considera- 
tion of the child's training it becomes evident that 
the great subjects which are most useful for disci- 
pline in the period of secondary education are the 
mathematical studies on the one hand, which exer- 
cise the faculty of abstraction, and the positive 
sciences, which train the power of observation and 
require truth to detail. If we should pursue the 
subject into the collegiate period, we should find 
mental and moral science, literature, and history 
coming to their rights. If this be in the main 
psychological, we see that language study, as 
such, should have no great place in secondary 
education. The study of grammar, as has been 
already said, is very useful in the early periods 
of development if taught vocally ; it brings the 
child out in self-expression, and carries its own 
correctives, from the fact that its results are al- 
ways open to social control These are, in my 
mind, the main functions of the study of language. 

What, then, is the justification for devoting ten 
or twelve years of the youth's time to study of a 
dead language, as is commonly done in the case 
of Latin ? The utility of expression does not enter 
into it, and the discipline of truth to elegant liter- 
ary copy can be even so well attained from the 
study of our own tongue, which is lamentably 
neglected. In all this dreary language study, the 
youth's interest is dried up at its source. He is 
fed on formulas and rules; he has no outlet for 
14 



198 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

invention or discovery; lists of exceptions to 
the rules destroy the remnant of his curiosity 
and incentive; even reasoning from analogy is 
strictly forbidden him; he is shut up from Nature 
as in a room with no windows; the dictionary is 
his authority as absolute and final as it is flat and 
sterile. His very industry, being forced rather 
than spontaneous, makes him mentally, no less 
than physically, stoop-shouldered and near-sight- 
ed. It seems to be one of those mistakes of the 
past still so well lodged in tradition and class 
rivalry that soundness of culture is artificially 
identified with its maintenance. Yet there is no 
reason that the spirit of classical culture and the 
durable elements of Greek and Roman life should 
not be as well acquired — nay, better — from the 
study of history, archaeology, and literature. For 
this language work is not study of literature. 
Not one in one hundred of the students who are 
forced through the periodical examinations in these 
languages ever gets any insight into their aesthet- 
ic quality or any inspiration from their form. 

But more than this. At least one positively 
vicious effect follows from language study with 
grammar and lexicon, no matter what the language 
be. The habit of intellectual guessing grows with 
the need of continuous effort in putting together 
elements which go together for no particular rea- 
son. When a thing can not be reasoned out, it 
may just as well be guessed out. The guess is 
always easier than the dictionary, and, if suc- 
cessful, it answers just as well. Moreover, the 
teacher has no way of distinguishing the pupil's 
replies which are due to the guess from those due 
to honest work. I venture to say, from personal 
experience, that no one who has been through the 



THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 199 

usual classical course in college and before it has 
not more than once staked his all upon the happy 
guess at the stubborn author's meaning. This 
shallow device becomes a substitute for honest 
struggle. And it is more than shallow ; to guess 
is dishonest. It is a servant to unworthy inertia; 
and worse, it is a cloak to mental unreadiness and 
to conscious moral cowardice. The guess is a 
bluff to fortune when the honest gauntlet of ig- 
norance should be thrown down to the issue. 

The effects of this show themselves in a habit 
of mind tolerated in persons of a literary bent, 
which is a marked contrast to that demanded and 
exemplified by science. I think that much of our 
literary impressionism and sentimentalism reveal 
the guessing habit. 

Yet why guess ? Why be content with an im- 
pression ? Why hint of a " certain this and a 
certain that" when the "certain," if it mean 
anything, commonly means the uncertain ? 
Things worth writing about should be formulated 
clearly enough to be understood. Why let the 
personal reaction of the individual's feeling suf- 
fice ? Our youth need to be told that the guess 
is immoral, that hypothesis is the servant of re- 
search, that the private impression instructs no- 
body, that presentiment is usually wrong, that 
science is the best antidote to the fear of ghosts, 
and that the reply "I guess so" betrays itself, 
whether it arise from bravado, from cowardice, 
or from literary finesse ! I think that the great 
need of our life is honesty, that the bulwark of 
honesty in education is exact knowledge with the 
scientific habit of mind, and, furthermore, that 
the greatest hindrance to these things is the train- 
ing which does not, with all the sanctions at its 



200 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

command, distinguish the real, with its infallible 
tests, from the shadowy and vague, but which 
contents itself with the throw of the intellectual 
dice box. Any study which tends to make the 
difference between truth and error pass with the 
throwing of a die, and which leads the student to 
be content with a result he can not verify, has 
somewhat the function in his education of the 
puzzle in our society amusements or the game of 
sliced animals in the nursery. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE INDIVIDUAL MIND AND SOCIETY — SOCIAL 
PSYCHOLOGY. 

The series of questions which arise when we 
consider the individual as a member of society 
fall together under the general theory of what 
has been called, in a figure, Social Heredity. 

The treatment of this topic will show some- 
thing of the normal relation of the individual's 
mind to the social environment; and the chapter 
following will give some hints as to the nature 
and position of that exceptional man in whom we 
are commonly so much interested — the Genius. 

The theory of social heredity has been worked 
up through the contributions, from different points 
of view, of several authors. What, then, is social 
heredity ? 

This is a very easy question to answer, since 
the group of facts which the phrase describes are 
extremely familiar — so much so that the reader 
may despair, from such a commonplace beginning, 



THE INDIVIDUAL MIND AND SOCIETY. 20 1 

of getting any novelty from it. The social heri-. 
tage is, of course, all that a man or woman gets 
from the accumulated wisdom of society. All 
that the ages have handed down — the literature, 
the art, the habits of social conformity, the experi- 
ence of social ills, the treatment of crime, the re- 
lief of distress, the education of the young, the 
provision for the old — all, in fact, however de- 
scribed, that we men owe to the ancestors whom 
we reverence, and to the parents whose presence 
with us perhaps we cherish still. Their struggles, 
the orator has told us, have bought our freedom; 
we enter into the heritage of their thought and 
wisdom and heroism. All true; we do. We all 
breathe a social atmosphere ; and our growth is 
by this breathing-in of the tradition and example 
of the past. 

Now, if this be the social heritage, we may go 
on to ask : Who are to inherit it ? To this we 
may again add the further question: How does 
the one who is born to such a heritage as this 
come into his inheritance? And with this yet 
again : How may he use his inheritance — to what 
end and under what limitations ? These questions 
come so readily into the mind that we naturally ■ 
wish the discussion to cover them. 

Generally, then, who is eligible for the social 
inheritance? This heir to society we are, all of 
us. Society does not make a will, it is true; nor 
does society die intestate. To say that it is we 
who inherit the riches of the social past of the 
race, is to say that we are the children of the past 
in a sense which comes upon us with all the force 
that bears in upon the natural heir when he finds 
his name in will or law. But there are exceptions. 
And before we seek the marks of the legitimacy 



202 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

of our claim to be the heirs of the hundreds of 
years of accumulated thought and action, it may 
be well to advise ourselves as to the poor creatures 
who do not enter into the inheritance with us. 
They are those who people our asylums, our re- 
formatories, our jails and penitentiaries; those 
who prey upon the body of our social life by de- 
mands for charitable support, or for the more 
radical treatment by isolation in institutions; in- 
deed, some who are born to fail in this inheritance 
are with us no more, even though they were of 
our generation ; they have paid the penalty which 
their effort to wrest the inheritance from us has 
cost, and the grave of the murderer, the burglar, 
the suicide, the red-handed rebel against the law 
of social inheritance, is now their resting place. 
Society then is, when taken in the widest sense, 
made up of two classes of people — the heirs who 
possess and the delinquents by birth or conduct 
who have forfeited the inheritance. 

We may get a clear idea of the way a man at- 
tains his social heritage by dropping figure for the 
present and speaking in the terms of plain natural 
science. Ever since Darwin propounded the law 
of Natural Selection the word Variation has been 
current in the sense explained on an earlier page. 

The student in natural science has come to 
look for variations as the necessary preliminary 
to any new step of progress and adaptation in 
the sphere of organic life. Nature, we now know, 
is fruitful to an extraordinary degree. She pro- 
duces many specimens of everything. It is a 
general fact of reproduction that the offspring of 
plant or animal is quite out of proportion in num- 
bers to the parents that produce them, and often 
also to the means of living which await them. 



THE INDIVIDUAL MIND AND SOCIETY. 203 

One plant produces seeds which are carried far 
and near — to the ocean and to the desert rocks, 
no less than to the soil in which they may take 
root and grow. Insects multiply at a rate which 
is simply inconceivable to our limited capacity for 
thinking in figures. Animals also produce more 
abundantly, and man has children in numbers 
which allow him to bury half his offspring yearly 
and yet increase the adult population from year to 
year. This means, of course, that whatever the 
inheritance is, all do not inherit it ; some must go 
without a portion whenever the resources of na- 
ture, or the family, are in any degree limited and 
when competition is sharp. 

Now Nature solves the problem among the 
animals in the simplest of ways. All the young 
born in the same family are not exactly alike ; 
" variations " occur. There are those that are 
better nourished, those that have larger muscles, 
those that breathe deeper and run faster. So the 
question who of these shall inherit the earth, the 
fields, the air, the water — this is left to itself. The 
best of all the variations live, and the others die. 
Those that do live have thus, to all intents and 
purposes, been " selected " for the inheritance, 
just as really as if the parents of the species had 
left a will and had been able to enforce it. This 
is the principle of " Natural Selection." 

Now, this way of looking at. problems which 
involve aggregates of individuals and their distri- 
bution is becoming a habit of the age. Wherever 
the application of the principles of probability do 
not explain a statistical result — that is, wherever 
there seem to be influences which favour particular 
individuals at the expense of others — men turn at 
once to the occurrence of Variations for the justifi- 



204 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

cation of this seeming partiality of Nature. And 
what it means is that Nature is partial to individ- 
uals in snaking them, in their natural heredity, rather 
than after they are born. 

The principle of heredity with variations is a 
safe assumption to make also in regard to man- 
kind ; and we see at once that in order to come in 
for a part in the social heritage of our fathers we 
must be born fit for it. We must be born so en- 
dowed for the race of social life that we assimi- 
late, from our birth up, the spirit of the society 
into which we are reared. The unfittest, socially, 
are suppressed. In this there is a distinction be- 
tween this sphere of survival and that of the ani- 
mal world. In it the fittest survive, the others 
are lost; but in society the unfittest are lost, all 
the others survive. Social selection weeds out the 
unfit, the murderer, the most unsocial man, and says 
to him: "You must die"; natural selection seeks 
out the most fit and says : "You alone are to live." 
The difference is important, for it marks a prime 
series of distinctions, when the conceptions drawn 
from biology are applied to social phenomena ; 
but for the understanding of variations we need 
not now pursue it further. The contrast may be 
put, however, in a sentence : in organic evolution 
we have the natural selection of the fit; in social 
progress we have the social suppression of the unfit. 

Given social variations, therefore, differences 
among men, what becomes of this man or that ? 
We see at once that if society is to live there must 
be limits set somewhere to the degree of variation 
which a given man may show from the standards 
of society. And we may find out something of 
these limits by looking at the evident, and marked 
differences which actually appear about us. 



THE INDIVIDUAL MlND AND SOCIETY. 205 

First, there is the idiot. He is not available, 
from a social point of view, because he varies too 
much on the side of defect. He shows from in- 
fancy that he is unable to enter into the social 
heritage because he is unable to learn to do social 
things. His intelligence does not grow with his 
body. Society pities him if he be without natural 
protection, and puts him away in an institution. 
So of the insane, the pronounced lunatic; he 
varies too much to sustain in any way the wide 
system of social relationships which society re- 
quires of each individual. Either he is unable to 
take care of himself, or he attempts the life of 
some one else, or he is the harmless, unsocial 
thing that wanders among us like an animal or 
stands in his place like a plant. He is not a 
factor in social life ; he has not come into the in- 
heritance. 

Then there is the extraordinary class of peo- 
ple whom we may describe by a stronger term 
than those already employed. We find not only 
the unsocial, the negatively unfit, those whom 
society puts away with pity in its heart; there 
are also the antisocial, the class whom we usually 
designate as criminals. These persons, like the 
others, are variations; but they seem to be varia- 
tions in quite another way. They do not repre- 
sent lack on the intellectual side always or alone, 
but on the moral side, on the social side, as such. 
The least we can say of the criminals is that they 
tend, by heredity or by evil example, to violate 
the rules which society has seen fit to lay down 
for the general security of men living together in 
the enjoyment of the social heritage. So far, 
then, they are factors of disintegration, of de- 
struction ; enemies of the social progress which 



2o6 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

proceeds from generation to generation by just 
this process of social inheritance. So society 
says to the criminal also : " You must per- 
ish." We kill off the worst, imprison the bad 
for life, attempt to reform the rest. They, too, 
then, are excluded from the heritage of the 
past. 

So our lines of eligibility get more and more 
narrowly drawn. The instances of exclusion now 
cited serve to give us some insight into the real 
qualities of the man who lives a social part, and 
the way he comes to live it. 

Passing on to take up the second of the in- 
formal topics suggested, we have to find the best 
description that we can of the social man— the one 
who is fitted for the social life. This question 
concerns the process by which any one of us 
comes into the wealth of relationships which the 
social life represents. For to say that a man does 
this is in itself to say that he is the man society is 
looking for. Indeed, this is the only way to describe 
the man — to actually find him. Society is essen- 
tially a growing, shifting thing. It changes from 
age to age, from country to country. The Greeks 
had their social conditions, and the Romans 
theirs. Even the criminal lines are drawn dif- 
ferently, somewhat, here and there; and in a low 
stage of civilization a man may pass for normal 
who, in our time, would be described as weak in 
mind. This makes it necessary that the standards 
of judgment of a given society should be deter- 
mined by an actual examination of the society, 
and forbids us to say that the limits of varia- 
tion which society in general will tolerate must 
be this or that. 

We may say, then, that the man who is fit for 



THE INDIVIDUAL MIND AND SOCIETY. 207 

social life must be born to learn. The need of learn- 
ing is his essential need. It comes upon him from 
his birth. Speech is the first great social function 
which he must learn, and with it all the varieties 
of verbal accomplishment — reading and writing. 
This brings to the front the great method of all 
his learning — imitation. In order to be social he 
must be imitative, imitative, imitative. He must 
realize for himself by action the forms, conven- 
tions, requirements, co-operations of his social 
group. All is learning; and learning not by 
himself and at random, but under the leading of 
the social conditions which surround him. Plas- 
ticity is his safety and the means of his progress. 
So he grows into the social organization, takes 
his place as a Socius in the work of the world, and 
lays deep the sense of values, upon the basis of 
which his own contributions — if he be destined to 
make contributions — to the wealth of the world 
are to be wrought out. This great fact that he is 
open to the play of the personal influences which 
are about him is just the " suggestibleness " which 
we have already described in an earlier chapter; 
and the influences themselves are '' suggestions " 
— social suggestions. These influences differ in 
different communities, as we so often remark. 
The Turk learns to live in a very different system 
of relations of " give and take " from ours, and 
ours differ as much from those of the Chinese. 
All that is characteristic of the race or tribe or 
group or family — all this sinks into the child and 
youth by his simple presence there in it, with the 
capacity to learn by imitation. He is suggest- 
ible, and here are the suggestions; he is made 
to inherit and he inherits. So it makes no differ- 
ence what his tribe or kindred be ; let him be a 



2o8 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

learner by imitation, and he becomes in turn pos- 
sessor and teacher. 

The case becomes more interesting still when 
we give the matter another turn, and say that in 
this learning all the members of society agree; 
all must be born to learfi the same things. They 
enter, if so be that they do, into the same social 
inheritance. This again seems like a very com- 
monplace remark ; but certain things flow from 
it. Each member of society gives and gets the 
same set of social suggestions; the differences 
being the degree of progress each has made, and 
the degree of variation which each one gives to 
what he has before received. This last difference 
is treated below where we consider the genius. 

There grows up, in all this give and take, in 
all the interchange of suggestions among you, 
me, and the other, an obscure sense of a certain 
social understanding about ourselves generally — 
a Zeitgeist, an atmosphere, a taste, or, in minor 
matters, a style. It is a very peculiar thing, this 
social spirit. The best way to understand that 
you have it, and something of what it is, is to get 
into a circle in which it is different. The com- 
mon phrase '' fish out of water " is often heard in 
reference to it. But that does not serve for sci- 
ence. The next best thing that I can do in the 
way of rendering it is to appeal to another word 
which has a popular sense, the word Judgment. 
Let us say that there exists in every society a 
general system of values, found in social usages, 
conventions, institutions, and formulas, and that 
our judgments of social life are founded on our 
habitual recognition of these values, and of the 
arrangement of them which has become more or 
less fixed in our society. For example, to be cor- 



THE INDIVIDUAL MIND AND SOCIETY. 209 

dial to a disagreeable neighbour shows good so- 
cial judgment in a small matter; not to quarrel 
with the homoeopathic enthusiast who meets you 
in the street and wishes to doctor your rheuma- 
tism out of a symptom book — that is good judg- 
ment. In short, the man gets to show more and 
more, as he grows up from childhood, a certain 
good judgment; and his good judgment is also 
the good judgment of his social set, community, 
or nation. The psychologist might prefer to say 
that a man " feels " this ; perhaps it would be 
better for psychological readers to say simply 
that he has a " sense " of it; but the popular use 
of the word "judgment" fits so accurately into 
the line of distinction we are now making that we 
may adhere to it. So we reach the general 
position that the eligible candidate for social life 
must have good judgment as represented by the 
common standards of judgment of his people. 

It may be doubted, however, by some of my 
readers whether this sense of social values called 
judgment is the outcome of suggestions operating 
throughout the term of one's social education. 
This is an essential point, and I must just assume 
it. It follows from what we said in an earlier 
chapter to be the way of the child's learning by 
imitation. It will appear true, I trust, to any one 
who may take the pains to observe the child's ten- 
tative endeavours to act up to social usages in the 
family and school. One may then actually see 
the growth of the sort of judgment which I am 
describing. Psychologists are coming to see that 
even the child's sense of his own personal self 
is a gradual attainment, achieved step by step 
through his imitative responses to his personal 
environment. His thought of himself is an in- 



2IO THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

terpretation of his thought of others, and his 
thought of another is due to further accommo- 
dation of his active processes to changes in his 
thought of a possible self. Around this funda- 
mental movement in his personal growth all the 
values of his life have their play. So I say that 
his sense of truth in the social relationships of 
his environment is the outcome of his very gradu- 
al learning of his personal place in these relation- 
ships. 

We reach the conclusion, therefore, from this 
part of our study, that the socially unfit person is 
the person of poor judgment. He may have 
learned a great deal ; he may in the main repro- 
duce the activities required by his social tradi- 
tion ; but with it all he is to a degree out of joint 
with the general system of estimated values by 
which society is held together. This may be 
shown to be true even of the pronounced types 
of unsocial individuals of whom we had occasion 
to speak at the outset. The criminal is, socially 
considered, a man of poor judgment. He may be 
more than this, it is true. He may have a bad 
strain of heredity, what the theologians call 
''original sin "; he then is an "habitual criminal " 
in the current distinction of criminal types ; and 
his own sense of his failure to accept the teach- 
ings of society may be quite absent, since crime 
is so normal to him. But the fact remains that 
in his judgment he is mistaken ; his normal is not 
society's normal. He has failed to be educated 
in the judgments of his fellows, however besides 
and however more deeply he may have failed. 
Or, again, the criminal may commit crime simply 
because he is carried away in an eddy of good 
companionship, which represents a temporary 



THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 21 1 

current of social life; or his nervous energies 
may be overtaxed temporarily or drained of their 
strength, so that his education in social judg- 
ment is forgotten : he is then the " occasional " 
criminal. It is true of the man of this type also 
that while he remains a criminal he has lost his 
balance, has yielded to temptation, has gratified 
private impulse at the expense of social sanity ; 
all this shows the lack of that sustaining force 
of moral consciousness which represents the level 
of social rightness in his time and place. Then, 
as to the idiot, the imbecile, the insane, they, too, 
have no good judgment, for the very adequate 
but pitiful reason that they have no judgment 
at all. 

This, then, is the doctrine of Social Heredity ; 
it illustrates the side of conformity, of personal 
acquiescence on the part of the individual in the 
rules of social life. Another equally important 
side, that of the personal initiative and influence 
of the individual mind in society, remains to be 
spoken of in the next chapter. Social Heredity 
emphasizes Imitation; the Genius, to whom we 
now turn, illustrates Invention. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 

The facts concerning the genius seem to indi- 
cate that he is a being somewhat exceptional and 
apart. Common mortals stand about him with 
expressions of awe. The literature of him is 
embodied in the alcoves of our libraries most 



212 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

accessible to the public, and even the wayfaring 
man, to whom life is a weary round, and his con- 
quests over nature and his fellows only the di- 
vision of honours on a field that usually witnesses 
drawn battles or bloody defeats, loves to stimulate 
his courage by hearing of the lives of those who put 
nature and society so utterly to rout. He hears 
of men who swayed the destinies of Europe, who 
taught society by outraging her conventions, 
whose morality even was reached sometimes by 
scorn of the peccadilloes which condemn the or- 
dinary man. Every man has in him in some de- 
gree the hero worshipper, and gets inflamed some- 
what by reading Carlyle's Frederick the Great. 

Of course, this popular sense can not be 
wholly wrong. The genius does accomplish the 
world movements. Napoleon did set the destiny 
of Europe, and Frederick did reveal, in a sense, 
a new phase of moral conduct. The truth of 
these things is just what makes the enthusiasm of 
the common man so healthy- and stimulating. It 
is not the least that the genius accomplishes that 
he thus elevates the traditions of man and in- 
spires the literature that the people read. He 
sows the seeds of effort in the fertile soil of the 
newborn of his own kind, while he leads those 
who do not have the same gifts to rear and tend 
the growing plant in their own social gardens. 
This is true ; and a philosophy of society should 
not overlook either of the facts — the actual deeds 
of the great man with his peculiar influence upon 
his own time, and his lasting place in the more 
inspiring social tradition which is embodied in 
literature and art. 

Yet the psychologist has to present just the 
opposite aspect of these apparent exceptions to 



THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 213 

the canons of our ordinary social life. He has 
to oppose the extreme claim made by the writers 
who attempt to lift the genius quite out of the 
normal social movement. For it only needs a 
moment's consideration to see that if the genius 
has no reasonable place in the movement of so- 
cial progress in the world, then there can be no 
possible doctrine or philosophy of such progress. 
To the hero worshipper his hero comes in simply 
to "knock out," so to speak, all the regular move- 
ment of the society which is so fortunate, or so 
unfortunate, as to have given him birth ; and by 
his initiative the aspirations, beliefs, struggles of 
the community or state get a push in a new di- 
rection — a tangent to the former movement or a 
reversal of it. If this be true, and it be further 
true that no genius who is likely to appear can 
be discounted by any human device before his 
abrupt appearance upon the stage of action, then 
the history of facts must take the place of the 
science or philosophy of them, and the chroni- 
cler become the only historian with a right to be. 
For of what value can we hold the contribu- 
tion which the genius makes to thought if this 
contribution runs so across the acquisitions of 
the earlier time and the contributions of earlier 
genius that no line of common truth can be dis- 
covered between him and them ? Then each so- 
ciety would have its own explanation of itself, 
and that only so long as it produced no new- 
genius. It may be, of course, that society is so 
constituted — or, rather, so lacking in constitution 
— that simple variations in brain physiology are 
the sufficient reason for its cataclysms ; but a great 
many efforts will be made to prove the contrary 
before this highest of all spheres of human ac- 
15 



2T4 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

tivity is declared to have no meaning — no thread 
which runs from age to age and links mankind, 
the genius and the man who plods, in a common 
and significant development. 

In undertaking this task we must try to judge 
the genius with reference to the sane social man, 
the normal Socius. What he is we have seen. He 
is a person who learns to judge by the judgments of 
society. What, then, shall we say of the genius 
from this point of view ? Can the hero worshipper 
be right in saying that the genius teaches society 
to judge; or shall we say that the genius, like 
other men, must learn to judge by the judgments 
of society ? 

The most fruitful point of view is, no doubt, 
that which considers the genius a variation. And 
unless we do this it is evidently impossible to get 
any theory which will bring him into a general 
scheme. But how great a variation ? And in 
what direction ? — these are the questions. The 
great variations found in the criminal by heredity, 
the insane, the idiotic, etc., we have found ex- 
cluded from society; so we may well ask why 
the genius is not excluded also. If our deter- 
mination of the limits within which society de- 
cides who is to be excluded is correct, then the 
genius must come within these limits. He can not 
escape them and live socially. 

The Intelligence of the Genius. — The directions 
in which the genius actually varies from the aver- 
age man are evident as a matter of fact. He is, 
first of all, a man of great power of thought, of 
great "constructive imagination," as the psychol- 
ogists say. So let us believe, first, that a genius 
is a man who has occasionally greater thoughts 
than other men have. Is this a reason for ex- 



THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 215 

eluding him from society? Certainly not ; for by 
great thoughts we mean true thoughts, thoughts 
which will work, thoughts which will bring in a 
new area in the discovery of principles, or of their 
application. This is just what all development 
depends upon, this attainment of novelty, which 
is consistent with older knowledge and supple- 
mentary to it. But suppose a man have thoughts 
which are not true, which do not fit the topic of 
their application, which contradict established 
knowledges, or which result in bizarre and fanci- 
ful combinations of them ; to that man we deny the 
name genius : he is a crank, an agitator, an anar- 
chist, or what not. The test, then, which we bring 
to bear upon the intellectual variations which men 
show is that of truth, practical workability — in 
short, to sum it up, ''fitness." Any thought, to 
live and germinate, must be a fit thought. And 
the community's sense of the fitness of the 
thought is their rule of judgment. 

Now, the way the community got this sense — 
that is the great result we have reached above. 
Their sense of fitness is just what I called above 
their judgment. So far, at least, as it relates to 
matters of social import, it is of social origin. It 
reflects the outcome of all social heredity, tradi- 
tion, education. The sense of social truth is 
their criterion of social thoughts, and unless the 
social reformer's thought be in some way fit to 
go into the setting thus made by earlier social 
development, he is not a genius but a crank. 

I may best show the meaning of the claim 
that society makes upon the genius by asking in 
how far in actual life he manages to escape this 
account of himself to society. The facts are very 
plain, and this is the class of facts which some 



2l6 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

writers urge, as supplying an adequate rule for 
the application of the principles of their social phi- 
losophy. The simple fact is, say they, that with- 
out the consent of society the thoughts of your 
hero, whether he be genius or fool, are practically 
valueless. The fulness of time must come ; and 
the genius before his time, if judged by his works, 
can not be a genius at all. His thought may be 
great, so great that, centuries after, society may 
attain to it as its richest outcome and its pro- 
foundest intuition ; but before that time, it is as 
bizarre as a madman's fancies and as useless. 
What would be thought, we might be asked by 
writers of this school, of a rat which developed 
upon its side the hand of a man, wnth all its 
mechanism of bone, muscle, tactile sensibility, 
and power of delicate manipulation, if the re- 
mainder of the creature w^ere true to the pat- 
tern of a rat ? Would not the rest of the rat 
tribe be justified in leaving this anomaly behind 
to starve in the hole where his singular appendage 
held him fast ? Is such a rat any the less a mon- 
ster because man finds use for his hands. 

To a certain extent this argument is forcible 
and true. If social utility be our rule of defini- 
tion, then certainly the premature genius is no 
genius. And this rule of definition may be put 
in another way which renders it still more plaus- 
ible. The variations which occur in intellectual 
endowment, in a community, vary about a mean; 
there is, theoretically, an average man. The dif- 
ferences among men which can be taken account 
of in any philosophy of life must be in some 
way referable to this mean. The variation which 
does not find its niche at all in the social envi- 
ronment, but which strikes all the social fellows 



THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 217 

with disapproval, getting no sympathy whatever, 
is thereby exposed to the charge of being the 
" sport" of Nature and the fruit of chance. The 
lack of hearing which awaits such a man sets him 
in a form of isolation, and stamps him not only as 
a social crank, but also as a cosmic tramp. 

Put in its positive and usual form, this view 
simply claims that man is always the outcome of 
the social movement. The reception he gets is a 
measure of the degree in which he adequately 
represents this movement. Certain variations 
are possible — men who are forward in the legiti- 
mate progress of society — and these men are the 
true and only geniuses. Other variations, which 
seem to discount the future too much, are 
*' sports " ; for the only permanent discounting of 
the future is that which is projected from the ele- 
vation of the past. 

The great defect of this view is found in its 
definitions. We exclaim at once : who made the 
past the measure of the future ? and who made 
social approval the measure of truth ? What is 
there to eclipse the vision of the poet, the invent- 
or, the seer, that he should not see over the heads 
of his generation, and raise his voice for that 
which, to all men else, lies behind the veil ? The 
social philosophy of this school can not answer 
these questions, I think ; nor can it meet the ap- 
peal we all make to history when we cite the 
names of Aristotle, Pascal, and Newton, or of any 
of the men who single-handed and alone have set 
guide-posts to history, and given to the world 
large portions of its heritage of truth. What can 
set limit to the possible variations of fruitful in- 
tellectual power ? Rare such variations — that is 
their law : the greater the variation, the more 



2l8 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

rare ! But so is genius : the greater, the more 
rare. As to the rat with the human hand, he 
would not be left to starve and decay in his hole ; 
he would be put in alcohol when he died, and 
kept in a museum ! And the lesson which he 
would teach to the wise biologist would be that 
here in this rat Nature had shown her genius 
by discounting in advance the slow processes of 
evolution ! 

It is, indeed, the force of such considerations 
as these which have led to many justifications of 
the positions that the genius is quite out of con- 
nection with the social movement of his time. 
The genius brings his variations to society 
whether society will or no ; and as to harmony 
between them, that is a matter of outcome rather 
than of expectation or theory. We are told the 
genius comes as a brain-variation ; and between 
the physical heredity which produces him and the 
social heredity which sets the tradition of his time 
there is no connection. 

But this is not tenable, as we have reason to 
think, from the interaction which actually takes 
place between physical and social heredity. To 
be sure, the heredity of the individual is a physio- 
logical matter, in the sense that the son must in- 
herit from his parents and their ancestors alone. 
But granted that two certain parents are his par- 
ents, we may ask how these two certain parents 
came to be his parents. How did his father come 
to marry his mother, and the reverse ? This is 
distinctly a social question ; and to its solution 
all the currents of social influence and suggestion 
contribute. Who is free from social considera- 
tions in selecting his wife ? Does the coachman 
have an equal chance to get the heiress, or the 



THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 219 

blacksmith the clergyman's daughter ? Do we 
find inroads made in Newport society by the 
ranchman and the dry-goods clerk ? And are not 
the inroads which we do find, the inroads made 
by the counts and the marquises, due to influences 
which are quite social and psychological ? Again, 
on the other hand, what leads the count and the 
marquis to lay their titles at Newport doors, 
while the ranchman and the dry-goods clerk 
keep away, but the ability of both these types of 
suitors to estimate their chances just on social 
and psychological grounds ? Novelists have rung 
the changes on this intrusion of social influences 
into the course of physical heredity. Bourget's 
Cosmopolis is a picture of the influence of social 
race characteristics on natural heredity, with the 
reaction of natural heredity agam upon the new 
social conditions. 

A speech of a character of Balzac's is to the 
point, as illustrating a certain appreciation of 
these social considerations which we all to a de- 
gree entertain. The Duchesse de Carigliano says 
to Madame de Sommervieux : " I know the world 
too well, my dear, to abandon myself to the dis- 
cretion of a too superior man. You should know 
that one may allow them to court one, but marry 
them — that is a mistake ! Never — no, no. It is 
like wanting to find pleasure in inspecting the 
machinery of the opera instead of sitting in a box 
to enjoy its brilliant illusions." To be sure, we 
do not generally deliberate in this wise when we 
fall in love ; but that is not necessary, since our 
social environment sets the style by the kind of 
intangible deliberation which I have called judg- 
ment and fitness. Suppose a large number of 
Northern advocates of social equality should mi- 



2 20 THE STORY OF THE ML\D. 

grate to the Southern United States, and, true to 
their theory, intermarry with the blacks. Would 
it not then be true that a social theory had run 
athwart the course of physiological descent, lead- 
ing to the production of a legitimate mulatto so- 
ciety ? A new race might spring from such a 
purely psychological or social initiation. 

While not agreeing, therefore, with the theory 
which makes the genius independent of the social 
movement — least of all with the doctrine that 
physical heredity is uninfluenced by social condi- 
tions — the hero worshipper is right, nevertheless, 
in saying that we can not set the limitations of the 
genius on the side of variations toward high in-^ 
tellectual endowment. So if the general position 
be true that he is a variation of some kind, we 
must look, elsewhere for the direction of those 
peculiar traits whose excess would be his condem- 
nation. This we can find only in connection with 
the other demand that w^e make of the ordinary 
man — the demand that he be a man of good judg- 
ment. And to this we may now turn. 

The Judgment of the Genius. — We should bear 
in mind in approaching this topic the result which 
follows from the reciprocal character of social 
relationships. No genius ever escapes the require- 
ments laid down for his learning, his social hered- 
ity. Mentally he is a social outcome, as well as 
are the fellows who sit in judgment on him. He 
must judge his own thoughts therefore as they 
do. And his own proper estimate of things and 
thoughts, his relative sense of fitness, gets applica- 
tion, by a direct law of his own mental processes, 
to himself and to his own creations. The limita- 
tions which, in the judgment of society, his vari- 
ations must not overstep, are set by his own judg- 



THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 221 

ment also. If the man in question have thoughts 
which are socially true, he must himself know that 
they are true. So we reach a conclusion regarding 
the selection of the particular thoughts which the 
genius may have : he and society must agree in re- 
gard to the fitness of them^ although in particular 
cases this agreement ceases to be the emphatic 
thing. The essential thing comes to be the reflec- 
tion of the social standard in the thinker's own 
judgment ; the thoughts thought must always be crit- 
ically judged by the thinker Jiimself ; and for the most 
part his judgment is at once also the social judgmeiit. 
This may be illustrated further. 

Suppose we take the man of striking thoughts 
and withal no sense of fitness — none of the judg- 
ment about them which society has. He will go 
through a mighty host of discoveries every hour. 
The very eccentricity of his imaginations will only 
appeal to him for. the greater admiration. He 
will bring his most chimerical schemes out and air 
them with the same assurance with which the real 
inventor exhibits his. But such a man is not pro- 
nounced a genius. If his ravings about this and 
that are harmless, we smile and let him talk ; but 
if his lack of judgment extend to things of grave 
import, or be accompanied by equal illusions re- 
garding himself and society in other relationships, 
then we classify his case and put him into the 
proper ward for the insane. Two of the com- 
monest forms of such impairment of judgment 
are seen in the victims of "fixed ideas "on the 
one hand, and the exaltes on the other. These 
men have no true sense of values, no way of se- 
lecting the fit combinations of imagination from 
the unfit; and even though some transcendently 
true and orioinal-thouo-ht were to flit through the 



222 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

diseased mind of such a one, it would go as it 
came, and the world would wait for a man with a 
sense of fitness to arise and rediscover it. The 
other class, the exaltes, are somewhat the reverse; 
the illusion of personal greatness is so strong that 
their thoughts seem to them infallible and their 
persons divine. 

Men of such perversions of judgment are com- 
mon among us. We all know the man who seems 
to be full of rich and varied thought, who holds 
us sometimes by the power of his conceptions or 
the beauty of his creations, but in whose thought 
we yet find some incongruity, some eminently unfit 
element, some grotesque application, some eleva- 
tion or depression from the level of commonplace 
truth, some ugly strain in the esthetic impression. 
The man himself does not know it, and that is 
the reason he includes it. His sense of fitness is 
dwarfed or paralyzed. We in the community 
come to regret that he is so " visionary," with all 
his talent ; so we accommodate ourselves to his 
unfruitfulness, and at the best only expect an. oc- 
casional hour's entertainment under the spell of 
his presence. This certainly is not the man to 
produce a world movement. 

Most of the men we call " cranks " are of this 
type. They are essentially lacking in judgment, 
and the popular estimate of them is exactly right. 

It is evident, therefore, from this last explana- 
tion, that there is a second direction of variation 
among men : variation in their sense of the truth and 
value of their own thoughts, and with them of the 
thoughts of others. This is the great limitation 
which the man of genius shares with men gener- 
ally — a limitation in the amount of variation which 
he may show in his social judgments, especially 



THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 223 

as these variations affect the claim which he makes 
upon society for recognition. It is evident that 
this must be an important factor in our estimate 
of the claims of the hero to our worship, especially 
since it is the more obscure side of his tempera- 
ment, and the side generally overlooked alto- 
gether. This let us call, in our further illustra- 
tions, the "social sanity" of the man of genius. 

The first indication of the kind of social 
variation which oversteps even the degree of 
indulgence society is willing to accord to the 
great thinker is to be found in the effect which 
education has upon character. The discipline of 
social development is, as we have seen, mainly 
conducive to the reduction of eccentricities, the 
levelling off of personal peculiarities. All who 
come into the social heritage learn the same great 
series of lessons derived from the past, and all 
get the sort of judgment required in social life 
from the common exercises of the home and school 
in the formative years of their education. So we 
should expect that the greater singularities of dis- 
position which represent insuperable difficulty in 
the process of social assimilation would show 
themselves early. Here it is that the actual con- 
flict comes — the struggle between impulse and so- 
cial restraint. Many a genius owes the redemp- 
tion of his intellectual gifts to legitimate social 
uses to the victory gained by a teacher and the 
discipline learned through obedience. And thus 
it is also that many who give promise of great 
distinction in early life fail to achieve it. They 
run off after a phantom, and society pronounces 
them mad. In their case the personal factor has 
overcome the social factor ; they have failed in 
the lessons they should have learned, their own 



2 24 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

self-criticism is undisciplined, and they miss the 
mark. 

These two extremes of variation, however, do 
not exhaust the case. One of them tends in a 
measure to the blurring of the light of genius, 
and the other to the rejection of social restraint 
to a degree which makes the potential genius over 
into a crank. The average man is the mean. Put 
the greatest reach of human attainment, and with 
it the greatest influence ever exercised by man, is 
yet more than either of these. It is not enough, 
the hero worshipper may still say, that the genius 
should have sane and healthy judgment, as society 
reckons sanity. The fact still remains that even in 
his social judgments he may instruct society. He 
may stand alone and, by sheer might, left his fel- 
low-men up to his point of vantage, to their eternal 
gain and to his eternal praise. Even let it be 
that he must have self-criticism, the sense of fit- 
ness you speak of, that very sense may transcend 
the vulgar judgment of his fellows. His judg- 
ment may be saner than theirs; and as his intel- 
lectual creations are great and unique, so may his 
sense of their truth be full and unique. Wagner 
led the musical world by his single-minded devo- 
tion to the ideas of Wagner; and Darwin had to 
be true to his sense of truth and to the formula- 
tions of his thought, though no man accorded 
him the right to instruct his generation either in 
the one or in the other. To be sure, this divine 
assurance of the man of genius may be counter- 
feited ; the vulgar dreamer often has it. But, 
nevertheless, when a genius has it, he is not a vul- 
gar dreamer. 

This is true, I think, and the explanation of it 
leads us to the last fruitful application of the doc- 



THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 225 

trine of variations. Just as the intellectual en- 
dowment of men may vary within very wude limits, 
so may the social qualifications of men. There 
are men who find it their meat to do society serv- 
ice. There are men so naturally born to take the 
lead in social reform, in executive matters, in or- 
ganization, in planning our social campaigns for 
us, that we turn to them as by instinct. They 
have a kind of insight to which we can only bow. 
They gain the confidence of men, win the support 
of women, and excite the acclamations of children. 
These people are the social geniuses. They seem 
to anticipate the discipline of social education. 
They do not need to learn the lessons of the so- 
cial environment. 

Now, such persons undoubtedly represent a 
variation toward suggestibility of the most deli- 
cate and singular kind. They surpass the teach- 
ers from whom they learn. It is hard to say that 
they " learn to judge by the judgments of society." 
They so judge without seeming to learn, yet they 
differ from the man whose eccentricities forbid 
him to learn through the discipline of society. 
The two are opposite extremes of variation ; that 
seems to me the only possible construction of 
them. It is the difference between the ice boat 
which travels faster than the wind and the skater 
who braves the wind and battles up-current in it. 
The latter is soon beaten by the opposition ; the 
former outruns its ally. The crank, the eccentric, 
the enthusiast — all these run counter to sane social 
judgment; but the genius leads society to his own 
point of view, and interprets the social movement 
so accurately, sympathetically, and with such pro- 
found insight that his very singularity gives 
greater relief to his inspiration. 



226 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

Now let a man combine with this insight — this 
extraordinary sanity of social judgment — the power 
of great inventive and constructive thought, and 
then, at last, we have our genius, our hero, and one 
that we well may worship ! To great thought he 
adds balance; to originality, judgment. This is 
the man to start the world movements if w^e want 
a single man to start them. For as he thinks pro- 
foundly, so he discriminates his thoughts justly, 
and assigns them values. His fellows judge with 
him, or learn to judge after him, and they lend to 
him the motive forces of success — enthusiasm, re- 
ward. He may wait for recognition, he may suffer 
imprisonment, he may be muzzled for thinking his 
thoughts, he may die and with him the truth to 
which he gave but silent birth. But the world 
comes, by its slower progress, to traverse the path 
in which he wished to lead it ; and if so be that 
his thought was recorded, posterity revives it in 
regretful sentences on his tomb. 

The two things to be emphasized, therefore, on 
the rational side of the phenomenally great man — 
I mean on the side of our means of accounting for 
him in reasonable terms — are these : first, his intel- 
lectual originality; and, second, the sanity of his 
judgment. And it is the variations in this second 
sort of endowment which give the ground which 
various writers have for the one-sided views now 
current in popular literature. 

We are told, on the one hand, that the genius 
is a ^' degenerate " ; on another hand, that he is to 
be classed with those of " insane " temper; and yet 
again, that his main characteristic is his readiness 
to outrage society by performing criminal acts. 
All these so-called theories rely upon facts — so far 
as they have any facts to rest upon — which, if 



THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 227 

Space permitted, we might readily estimate from 
our present point of view. In so far as a really 
great man busies himself mainly with things that 
are objective, which are socially and morally neu- 
tral — such as electricity, natural history, mechani- 
cal theory, with the applications of these — of 
course, the mental capacity which he possesses is 
the main thing, and his absorption in these things 
may lead to a warped sense of the more ideal and 
refined relationships which are had in view by the 
writer in quest for degeneracy. It will still be 
admitted, however, by those who are conversant 
with the history of science, that the greatest scien- 
tific geniuses have been men of profound quietness 
of life and normal social development. It is to 
the literary and artistic genius that the seeker 
after abnormality has to turn; and in this field, 
again, the facts serve to show their own meaning. 
As a general rule, these artistic prodigies do 
not represent the union of variations which we 
find in the greatest genius. Such men are often 
distinctly lacking in power of sustained construc- 
tive thought. Their insight is largely what is 
called intuitive. They have flashes of emotional 
experience which crystallize into single creations 
of art. They depend upon " inspiration " — a word 
which is responsible for much of the overrating of 
such men, and for a good many of their illusions. 
Not that they do not perform great feats in the 
several spheres in which their several " inspira- 
tions " come ; but with it all they often present the 
sort of unbalance and fragmentary intellectual en- 
dowment which allies them, in particular instances, 
to the classes of persons whom the theories we are 
noticing have in view. It is only to be expected 
that the sharp jutting variation in the emotional 



2 28 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

and sesthetic realm which the great artist often 
shows should carry with it irregularities in heredity 
in other respects. Moreover, the very habit of 
living by inspiration brings prominently into view 
any half-hidden peculiarities which he may have 
in the remark of his associates, and in the conduct 
of his own social duties. But mark you, I do not 
discredit the superb art of many examples of the 
artistic "degenerate," so-called; that would be to 
brand some of the highest ministrations of genius, 
to us men, as random and illegitimate, and to con- 
sider impure some of our most exalting and intoxi- 
cating sources of inspiration. But I do still say 
that wherein such men m.ove us and instruct us 
they are in these sphe7'es above all things sane with 
our own sanity, and wherein they are insane they 
do discredit to that highest of all offices to which 
their better gifts make legitimate claim — the in- 
struction of mankind. 

Again one of Balzac's characters hits the nail 
on the head. "My dear mother," says Augustine, 
in the Sign of the Cat and Racket, " you judge 
superior people too severely. If their ideas were 
the same as other folks they would not be men of 
genius." 

" Very well," replies Madame Guillaume, " then 
let men of genius stop at home and not get 
married. What ! A man of genius is to make his 
wife miserable? And because he is a genius it is 
all right! Genius! genius! It is not so very 
clever to say black one minute and white the next, 
as he does, to interrupt other people, to dance 
such rigs at home, never to let you know which 
foot you are to stand on, to compel his wife never 
to be amused unless my lord is in gay spirits, and 
to be dull when he is dull." 



THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 229 

"But his imaginations ..." 

''What are such imaginations?" Madame 
Guillaume went on, interrupting her daughter 
again. " Fine ones are his, my word ! What 
possesses a man, that all on a sudden, without 
consulting a doctor, he takes it into his head to 
eat nothing but vegetables ? There, get along ! if 
he were not so grossly immoral, he would be fit to 
shut up in a lunatic asylum." 

"O mother, can you believe?" 

" Yes, I do believe. I met him in the Champs 
Elysees. He was on horseback. Well, at one min- 
ute he was galloping as hard as he could tear, and 
then pulled up to a walk. I said to myself at that 
moment, ' There is a man devoid of judgment ! ' ' 

The main consideration which this chapter aims 
to present, that of the responsibility of all men, be 
they great or be they small, to the same standards, 
of social judgment, and to the same philosophical 
treatment, is illustrated in the very man to whose 
genius we owe the principle upon which my re- 
marks are based — Charles Darwin ; and it is sin- 
gularly appropriate that we should also find the 
history of this very principle, that of variations 
with the correlative principle of natural selection, 
furnishing a capital illustration of our inferences. 
Darwin was, with the single exception of Aris- 
totle, possibly the man with the sanest judgment 
that the human mind has ever brought to the in- 
vestigation of nature. He represented, in an ex- 
ceedingly adequate way, the progress of scientific 
method up to his day. He was disciplined in all 
the natural science of his predecessors. His judg- 
ment was an epitome of the scientific insight of 
the ages which culminated then. The time was 
16 



230 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

ripe for just such a great constructive thought as 
his — ripe, that is, so far as the accumulation of 
scientific data was concerned. His judgment dif- 
fered then from the judgment of his scientific 
contemporaries mainly in that it was sounder and 
safer than theirs. And with it Darwin was a great 
constructive thinker. He had the intellectual 
strength which put the judgment of his time to 
the strain — everybody's but his own. This is 
seen in the fact that Darwin was not the first to 
speculate in the line of his great discovery, nor to 
reach formulas ; but with the others guessing took 
the place of induction. The formula was an un- 
criticised thought. The unwillmgness of society 
to embrace the hypothesis was justified by the 
same lack of evidence which prevented the think- 
ers themselves from giving it proof. And if no 
Darwin had appeared, the problem of evolution 
would have been left about where it had been left 
by the speculations of the Greek mind. Darwin 
reached his conclusion by what that other great 
scientific genius in England, Newton, described 
as the essential of discovery, "patient thought"; 
and having reached it, he had no alternative but 
to judge it true and pronounce it to the world. 

But the principle of variations with natural 
selection had the reception which shows that good 
judgment may rise higher than the level of its 
own social origin. Even yet the principle of Dar- 
win is but a spreading ferment in many spheres of 
human thought in which it is destined to bring 
the same revolution that it has w^orked in the 
sciences of organic life. And it was not until 
other men, who had both authority with the 
public and sufficient information to follow Dar- 
win's thought, seconded his judgment, that his 



THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 23 1 

formula began to have currency in scientific cir- 
cles. 

Now we may ask : Does not any theory of man 
which loses sight of the supreme sanity of Dar- 
win, and with him of Aristotle, and Angelo, and 
Leonardo, and Newton, and Leibnitz, and Shake- 
speare, seem weak and paltry ? Do not delicacy 
of sentiment, brilliancy of wit, fineness of rhyth- 
mical and esthetic sense, the beautiful contribu- 
tions of the talented special performer, sink into 
something like apologies — something even like 
profanation of that name to conjure by, the name 
of genius? And all the more if the profanation 
is made real by the moral irregularities or the 
social shortcomings which give some colour of 
justification to the appellation "degenerate"! 

But, on the other hand, why run to the other 
extreme and make this most supremely human of 
all men an anomaly, a prodigy, a bolt from the 
blue, an element of extreme disorder, born to 
further or to distract the progress of humanity by 
a chance which no man can estimate ? The re- 
sources of psychological theory are adequate, as 
I have endeavoured to show, to the construction 
of a doctrine of society w^hich is based upon the 
individual, in all the possibilities of variation 
which his heredity may bring forth, and which 
yet does not hide nor veil those heights of human 
greatness on which the halo of genius is wont to 
rest. Let us add knowledge to our surprise in 
the presence of such a man, and respect to our 
knowledge, and worship, if you please, to our re- 
spect, and with it all we then begin to see that 
because of him the world is the better place for 
us to live and work in. 

We find that, after all, we may be social psy- 



232 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

chologists and hero worshippers as well. And by 
being philosophers we have made our worship 
more an act of tribute to human nature. The 
heathen who bows in apprehension or awe before 
the image of an unknown god may be rendering 
all the worship he knows; but the soul that finds 
its divinity by knowledge and love has communion 
of another kind. So the worship which many 
render to the unexplained, the fantastic, the cata- 
clysmal — this is the awe that is born of ignorance. 
Given a philosophy that brings the great into 
touch with the commonplace, that delineates the 
forces which arise to their highest grandeur only 
in a man here and there, that enables us to con- 
trast the best in us with the poverty of him, and 
then we may do intelligent homage. To know 
that the greatest men of earth are men who think 
as I do, but deeper, and see the real as I do, but 
clearer, who work to the goal that I do, but 
faster, and serve humanity as I do, but better — 
that may be an incitement to my humility, but it 
is also an inspiration to my life. 



LITERATURE* 



General Psychology — Systematic Treatises. 

Bain, The Senses and the Intellect (New York : Apple- 
tons. London : Longmans). 

, The Emotio7is and the Will (the same). 

James, Priticiples of Psychology, 2 vols. (New York : 

Holt & Co. London : Macmillans. Abridged in 

Briefer Course). 
Ladd, Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory (New 

York: Scribners. London: Longmans. Abridged in 

Elements of Descriptive Psychology). 
Stout, Analytic Psychology, 2 vols. (London : Sonnen- 

schein. New York: Macmillans). 
Wundt, Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology 

(the same). 
Hoffding, Outlines of Psychology (Macmillans). 
Sterrett, The Power of Thought (New York : Scribners). 
Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, 2 vols. (New York : 

Holt. London : Macmillans. Abridged in Elemetits 

of Psychology), 
-, Articles in Johnson s Universal Cyclop(xdia 

(New York: Johnson Company). 

Psychology of the Child. 

Preyer, The Mind of the Child, 2 vols. (New York : Ap- 

pletons). 
Compayre, httellectual and Moral Development of the 

Child, 2 vols. (New York : Appletons). 

* Only books in English. The order of mention is with- 
out signiticance. 

233 



234 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

Sully, Studies of Childhood (New York : Appletons. 

London : Longmans). 
Baldwin, Me7ttal DevelopmeJit iii the Child and the Race 

(New York and London : Macmillans). 

Physiological Psychology. 

Ziehen, Introduction to Physiological Psychology (Lon- 
don : Sonnenschein, New York : Macmillans). 

Ladd, Elemejits of Physiological Psychology (New York : 
Scribners. London : Longmans. Abridged in Otit- 
lines). 

Donaldson, The Gt'-owth of the Brain (London : Walter 
Scott. New York : Scribners). 

Experimental Psychology. 

Kiilpe, Outline of Psychology (London : Sonnenschein 

New York : Macmillans). 
Sanford, Course in Experimental Psychology (Boston : 

Heath & Co.). 
Scripture, The New Psychology (London : Walter Scott, 

New York : Scribners). 

Animal and Evolution Psychology. 

Romanes. Mental Evolution in Ajiimals a7id Man, 2 

vols. (New York : Appletons). 

■ -, Animal Intelligence (New York: Appletons). 

, Darwin and 'After Dai'win, 3 } arts (Chicago : 

Open Court Company. London : Longmans). 
C. Lloyd Morgan, Comparative Psychology (London : W. 

Scott. New York : Scribners). 
, Animal life a7id Intelligence (London and New 

York: Arnold). 

-, Habit and Pistinct (the same). 



Groos, The Play of Animals (New York : Appletons. 
London: Chapman & Hall). 

Spencer, Pri7iciplcs of Psychology, 2 vols. (New York : 
Appletons). 

Hudson, The Naturalist i7i La Plata (London : Chap- 
man & Hall). 



LITERATURE. 235 

Darwin, Descent of Man (New York: Appletons). 

, Origin of Species (the same). 

Wallace, Darwinism (New York and London : Macmil- 
lans). 

Stanley, The Evolutionary Psychology of Feeli^tg (Lon- 
don : Sonnenschein. New York : Macmillans). 

Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Race 
(New York and London: Macmillans). 

Mental Defect and Disease. 

Maudsley, Pathology of Mind (Macmillans). 

Starr, Familiar For ins of Nervous Disease (New York : 
Wood). 

Collins, The Faculty of Speech QA-aLCXxviWdLwi). 

Hirsch, Genius a7id Degeneration (Appletons). 

Tuke, Dictionary of Psychological Medicine (Philadel- 
phia: Blakiston). 

Hypnotism. AND Allied Topics. 

Moll, Hypnotism (London : Scott. New York : Scrib- 
ners). 

Binet, Alterations of Personality (New York : Apple- 
tons. London: Chapman & Hall). 

Parish, Hallucinations and Illusions (London : Scott. 
New York : Scribners). 

Social and Ethical Psychology. 

Tarde, The Laws oj Imitation (New York : Holt). 

Le Bon, The Crowd (London : Scott. New York : Scrib- 
ners). 

Royce. Studies in Good and Evil (Appletons). 

Baldwin, Social and Ethical hiterpretations in Mental 
Development (Macmillans). 

Philosophy. 

Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy (Holt). 
Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (Boston : 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co.). 



236 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 

Ormond, Basal Cojtcepts in Philosophy (Scribners). 
James, The IVill lo Believe {Longmcins). 

Psychology and Philosophy (over the whole field). 

Baldwin s Dictio7iary of Philosophy and Psychology, 
with full bibliographies, French, German, and Italian 
equivalents, etc. (Macmillans). 

Unclassified. 

Spencer, Principles of Sociology (Appletons). 
Giddings, Prijiciples of Sociology (Macmillans). 
Mackensie, Introduction to Social Philosophy^ (Macmil- 
lans). 
Marshall, Pain, Pleasure, and ^Esthetics (Macmillans). 
Galton, Inquiries ijtto Humaii Faculty (Macmillans). 

, Natural Inheritance (Macmillans). 

Pearson, The Chances of Death (Arnold). 

Journals. 

The Psychological Review (Macmillans, all departments). 

The American Journal of Psychology (Worcester : 
Orpha, experimental). 

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CONTENTS OF VOLUME L 



The Development Hypothesis. 
Progress : Its Law and Cause. 
Transcen denial Physiology. 
The Nebular Hypothesis. 
Illogical Geology. 
Bail! oa the E-.notions and the Will. 



The Social Organism. 

The Origin of Animal Worship. 

Morals and Moral Sentime.ts. 

The Comparative Psychology of Man, 

Mr. Martineau on Evolution. 

The Factors of Organic Evolution.* 



CONTENTS OF VOLUME XL 



The Genesis of Science. 
The Ciassificatiiin of the Sciences: 
Reasons for dissenting from the Phi 
losophy of M. Comte. 



Replies to Criticisms. 
Professor Green's Explanations. 
The Philosophy of Style, t 
Use and Beauty. 



On Laws in General, and the Order The Sources of Architectural Types. 



of their Discovery. 
The Value of Evidence, 
What is Electricity ? 
Mill versus Hamilton— The Test 01 

Truth. 



Gracefulness. 

Personal Beauty. 

The Origin and Function of Music. 

The Physiology of Laughter. 



CONTENTS OF VOLUME III. 



Mnnners and Fashion. 
Railway Morals and Railway 

Policy. 
The Morals of Trade. 
Prison-Ethics. 
The Ethics of Kant. 
Absolute Political Ethics, 
Over- Legislation . 
Representative Government— What 

is it good for ? 



* Also published separately, 
t Also published separately. 
X Also published separately. 



State-Tampering with Money and 

Banks. 
Parliamentary Reform : The Dangers 

and the Safeguards. 
" The Collective Wisdom." 
Political Fetichism. 
Specialized Administration. 
Fiom Freedom to Bondage. 
The Americans.]: 
Index. 



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